KARACHI: Minister calls for uplift plans for rural poor
KARACHI, Nov 3: The Sindh Minister of Finance, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, has said there is an imperative need to launch practicable projects for improvement in the health, education and economic sectors in the rural areas.
He called for joint efforts in this regard by the public and private sectors and community organizations with their existing resources.
He was speaking as chief guest at a one-day workshop on “Micro Enterprise Development” here on Saturday. The workshop was organized to pass on the experiences of the President’s Task Force on Human Resource (PTFHR) to local community leaders.
The minister said the elimination of backwardness and poverty from the country warranted the development of community organizations.
He said besides financing the health and education sectors, the network of micro-financing should be expanded for providing loans to small commercial ventures to improve the economic conditions of the people.
In this regard, he stressed on implementing mid-and short-term practicable projects. He said, along with education and training, a right direction be set for micro-financing so that better and speedy results could be achieved.
Masdaq Malik outlined the objectives of the task force through a briefing, and gave an outline of the aims of the Micro Enterprises Development Project.
The workshop was also attended by members of the task force, the additional chief secretary, provincial secretaries and NGOs associated with the social sector.
Talking to a 12-member delegation of the PTFHR here the other day, the minister said Sindh was lagging behind in development in comparison to other provinces of the country, and had become a graveyard of development schemes due to mismanagement by successive governments.
He said huge amounts had been spent on inappropriate schemes at wrong places. The coastal belt of Pakistan was in a shambles and some 12 million acres of land were lost to the sea.
Dr Shaikh said due to mismanagement international donors agencies had shied away, but now they were returning to Pakistan after seeing improved policies and gaining confidence.
He disclosed that, for the first time, the Sindh government was negotiating with the World Bank on the Sindh Reforms Programme (SRP) worth 100 million US dollars. The SRP had four basic targets: financial discipline, civil service reform, social sector service delivery and private sector development, he said.
Sindh was the first province where education up to matriculation had been made free, education budget doubled, and the recurring overdraft of ten billion rupees for the past ten years had been squared up, he said.
The PTFHR delegation informed the minister that it was working on a national level action plan for education, health and improvement of the social sector, and recommendations in this respect would be finalized by January next year.—APP/PPI
