May 20, 2002	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 7, 1423

The present government has ultimately decided to scrap the much-maligned and one-time a prestigious $8 billion Social Action Programme (SAP) because of corruption and gross financial irregularities but without punishing or holding anyone accountable for the same.

The programme will formally be closed on June 30 this year due to continued opposition by the international donor agencies on the charges of corruption and financial bungling by the concerned government agencies, including the officials of the ministry of finance and the Planning Commission.

The massive $8 billion SAP which was launched in 1993 had consumed Rs400 billion till today. Where has this incredible amount of money gone? Why the successive governments continued SAP-1 and then SAP-2 when they were not producing desired results and allegations of misuse of funds were remained there.

The Planning Commission which had been monitoring the SAP throughout the decade has proposed to the Social Sector Coordination Committee of the Cabinet (CCSS) that the SAP should be abandoned because of lack of ownership, financial constraints, capacity building especially at the district and field levels, monitoring, involvement of communities, third party validation on governance issues, decentralization/devolution, rehabilitation of non-functional facilities, staffing and transfer policy, etc.

Is it not intriguing that the Commission decided to discard the SAP after the donors specially the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) virtually refused to further lend money for this programme. In fact, both the donors withdrew their roughly $100 million from the SAP and diverted them into drought aid or education sector.

The Commission now concedes that the objectives of SAP have not been achieved and that various problems coupled with documentation requirements of the programme itself have adversely affected the outcomes of the programme. “As a result the SAP failed to make the desired progress in terms of its coverage and quality”, the Planning Commission admitted in one of its presentations to the Cabinet Committee on Social Sectors.

Now when the government agencies, the World Bank and the ADB are talking about the failure of the SAP, why there is no action being taken against those who are responsible for it. Why the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is keeping quiet and not asking about the billions of rupees corruption and wastage in the name of improving primary health and education services along with providing clean drinking water, improving waterlogging and sanitation specially in the rural areas.

“We were forced to withdraw from the SAP because of enormous corrupt practices in the programme”, said an official of the donor agency in Islamabad. He said it is now the duty of the higher authorities to bring to book all those who were behind the failure of the SAP.

He said the SAP was launched recognising the long term pattern of under-achievement in human development with the aid of donor financing and technical assistance. It aimed at increasing public spending on social development, and improving the institutional and policy framework for service delivery. The record of the SAP in terms of improved outcomes in the target sectors was generally disappointing. While improvement did occur in some health and population indicators, the gains were at best marginal in education. It appears that the first phase of SAP succeeded to some extent in terms of creating more physical facilities, but quality enhancement by improving accountability among service providers made little headway. Expenditure on social sectors actually declined in the later years of SAP, with SAP’s defenders merely arguing that it helped to limit the decline. Pakistan remained with major problems of weak social sectors when the present government took office in 1999.

The World Bank believes that if Pakistan does not close its social gap, its long term ability to grow economically, alleviate poverty and sustain its debt will be fundamentally compromised.

In one of its recent reports it said that spanning social, economic and fiscal difficulties, the country’s current predicament is not rooted in a discrete set of policies to rapid rectification, but the structural factors linked to issue of governance.

The World Bank also maintained that it is within this context of broader failure of policy that one should understand Pakistan’s inability to take sufficient advantage or to promote adequate advances in social indicators. Over the past decade, stagnating poverty and a persistent, even widening social gap are direct legacies of these failures.

Issues of governance in the form of lacking accountability, voice and participation, are the heart of many difficulties encountered in mitigating poverty and a broadening access to social services in Pakistan. Neither debt reform nor the mere availability of donor funds is likely to dispel these problems. The strategies and tactics to bolster human development in Pakistan needs to be considered and implement concomitant policies in comprehensive and mutually reinforcing manner.

The Bank said that international community wanted to see Pakistan build on the important initiatives that has been launched in the past year, and to begin, step by step, to put in place the implementation arrangements that will gradually close the gap between today’s human development indicators and those that the country’s leadership strives for. The International community understands that this is going to be a long and hard road to travel, but with the right actions taken, one by one, progress can, and will be achieved.

The report said that given the government’s institutional constraints, the social protection strategy for the immediate future has to involve existing programmes like public works, targeted assistance, and programmes that involve the use of informal community based institutions. This requires improving or funding alternatives to existing formal programmes.

“Unlike other countries, public works programmes in Pakistan have failed to smooth consumption in periods of high unemployment, in part due to their capture by patronage politics. Example of such programmes are the Rural Works Programme and the Peoples Works Programme”, it said. In this context, however the report said that it is encouraging that the government’s recent Khushhal Pakistan programme incorporates active community participation in programme selection.

The government acknowledges that poor governance has been one of the key constraints to delivery of access and quality in the social sectors, and recognises the importance of cross cutting financial managements and civil service reform as part of the social sector agenda. “A key lesson from both Pakistan and international experience is that improving accountability in the civil service can help the education and health sectors function better”.

When governance of civil servants fails, education and health suffer the worst consequences. Teacher and health staff absenteeism is only one example of how weak governance threats the quality of education and heath service provision - but a critically important one.

“In general, significant challenges will remain the redeployment of staff, introducing incentives to encourage attendance and development of sense of professionalism amongst the cadres of health and education workers. Given the centrality of governance in past performance of the social sectors, the critical importance of showing seriousness of intent and some early results can not be overstated, the report said.

Pakistan’s decentralisation is in its early stages and it will be some years before full implementation of political, fiscal and administrative reforms produces results. Many governments around the world have announced decentralisation policies only to find that they are never fully implemented. In Pakistan, implementation of the full programme is essential to set the stage for the gains in social service improvement to occur, the report added.