A Lifeline Beyond Remittances: Pakistani Service Helps Expat Families Care for Aging Parents

LAHORE — It was around 3 a.m. when 66-year-old Shereen Sajjad Sheikh, who lives in Lahore while her children work thousands of kilometers away in Riyadh, began experiencing severe pain in her leg.

The pain had started two days earlier and briefly eased before becoming intense. Sheikh called a care service her family had subscribed to, and a team soon arrived, took her to a hospital for treatment, and brought her home afterward.

For decades, millions of Pakistanis working in the Gulf and elsewhere have supported their families back home largely through remittances. But as parents grow older, a new question has emerged for families like Sheikh’s: who steps in when money has been sent, but the children cannot be there?

Her son, 30-year-old Amir Sheikh, turned to Mohsyn, a Pakistani subscription-based care coordination service that has provided on-the-ground medical, emergency and everyday assistance in Pakistan since 2024.

“I think I called them at 3 o’clock,” Sheikh told Arab News. “They came and took me to the hospital. I went to the hospital and got a check-up done. I got a drip done. Alhamdulillah, I got well and left for home.”

Mohsyn says more than 35 percent of its clients are now based in the Middle East, its second-largest market after North America, with subscribers in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

Mohsyn founder and CEO Fahd Mehmood Khan said the company has delivered more than 200,000 hours of services over the past two years, with a team that includes field support officers, doctors and physiotherapists.

Pakistan has one of the world’s largest overseas populations, with around 13 million Pakistanis living abroad, according to figures cited by the company.

These Pakistanis sent home more than $41 billion in remittances in the fiscal year that ended on June 30, according to State Bank of Pakistan data.

Khan said those financial flows represent more than just household expenses.

“What does all of that remittance stand for?” he said. “It stands for the aspirations, the hopes, the savings, the care, the service delivery that they have for their family.”

For Sheikh’s son Amir, an asset and emergency management officer, arranging his parents’ needs from abroad had previously meant “fear and anxiety” over unfamiliar workers and relying heavily on extended family.

“What made me decide to use Mohsyn instead of relying on relatives or friends was Fahd’s narrative: ‘We are your brother on ground’,” he told Arab News.

The distance between the family is the result of decades of migration between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Sheikh spent 36 years living in the Kingdom, where her husband had lived since childhood. The couple came to Pakistan for a holiday in April this year and decided to extend their stay because of several family events and her husband Sajjad Sheikh’s difficulty with travel.

Sheikh says she sometimes needs urgent assistance, while at other times the need can be as simple as medication, checking a health concern or having someone to call. Her husband also occasionally has swollen feet, and she sends photographs to Mohsyn’s medical team for advice.

“If I don’t get anything from here or there, I just message them,” Sheikh said. “And Mashallah, my thing is delivered at home.”

Mohsyn primarily operates in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, while it also provides services in Faisalabad, Multan and some other cities. The company’s assistance ranges from hospital visits and emergencies to paperwork, household needs and social activities.

Seemab Haroon, Mohsyn’s key account manager in Lahore, says loneliness is also among the needs encountered by staff.

“There are some mothers who live alone and have no one to talk to,” she said. “They miss their children and their families a lot.”

The team organizes outings, coffee meetups and other activities alongside practical assistance, according to Haroon.

For Sheikh, however, the value of having help nearby is perhaps felt most in the small moments when something goes wrong and her children cannot simply drive over.

“They (Mohsyn’s team) call me from time to time and ask if there is a problem, if there is a need for anything,” she said.

For her son in Riyadh, those calls help bridge a distance that remittances alone cannot.

“Of course, I question the life I’m building far away from them every day,” Amir said.

“But having Mohsyn puts me at ease, gives me some satisfaction knowing that I can get them whatever they need, whenever they need.”

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