KARACHI: Experts warn against demographic explosion
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Nov 13: Speakers at a meeting on Tuesday urged the NGOs to join hands with the government to control the population growth as it was neutralising the economic progress of the country.
Speaking at the 17th annual regional council meeting of the Family Planning Association of Pakistan (FPAP), they said the goal was so difficult that neither the government, nor the NGOs could achieve it successfully on their own.
Sindh governor’s wife Khadija Soomro urged the people to plan their family so that they could properly feed, educate and groom their children.
The population in the country, she said, was increasing at an alarming pace and was putting an additional burden on country’s natural resources, so whatever little progress was being made in economy was being neutralised and the quality of life did not improve much.
Other speakers said Pakistan with its annual population growth rate, which had been brought down from the previous rate of over three to around 2.4 per cent now, was still among the highest in the region, including Iran, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India.
They said the government had set a target to bring down the population growth rate to 1.9 by 2003. They said though it was difficult, they would try to achieve it.
Referring to the objections raised on the family planning by the religious groups, they said that Iran, Bangladesh and Malaysia were Islamic countries but the population growth rate had been checked in those countries.
They said a few years back around 34 per cent of the population lived below the poverty line and that the ratio had increased, with around 45 per cent of the people living below the poverty line. The reason was that the natural resources and the economic progress could not match the increase in the population.
They said that the FPAP, which was formed in 1953, with its 14 hospitals, 200 service centres and mobile teams was providing services almost in all parts of the country, including the remote areas.
They said the FPAP had now focused on the armed forces and it had set up its centres in 14 garrisons, including those in Karachi, Hyderabad, Pano Aqil, Chhore and Badin.
They said it provided complete reproductive health services and had also recently introduced a Chinese procedure of non-scalpel vasectomy carried out without any incision or loss of blood.
They said they had also introduced a helpline on which the youth could call to discuss any problem — psychological, reproductive health related or general health issue, etc — being faced by them to get an expert advice. Around 45 per cent callers were women, while over 70 per cent of the callers were aged between 16 and 25 years.
They also urged the government to clear the Rs 1.1 million arrears out-standing against the Sindh government since 1999. The government receives the money from the foreign donors and after verification pays it to the concerned NGOs.
A former deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Syed Zafar Ali Shah, Syed Khadim Ali Shah, Noor Illahi Arian, Dr Hussain Bux Kolachi, Dr Mohammad Hussain Rizvi, Shahnaz Ahad, and others also spoke.
