MIRPURKHAS, June 25: The Sindh minister for health and population welfare, Ahsan Ahmad, has said that village-based female family planning workers have played a vital role to succeed the family planning programme in Sindh.

He was speaking as chief guest at an award distribution ceremony for village-based female family planning workers and seminar on the “Population and Environment” held here on Monday at the Bhittai Cultural Hall under the aegis of the district population welfare office, Mirpurkhas.

He informed that under the policy of restructuring of the federal government, 1,950 village workers of the Sindh population welfare department had been merged in the health department.

He said the programme to control population had been started since several decades but the target could not be achieved.

The Sindh minister said that in the eighth five-year plan, the ratio of population decreased from 2.9 to 2.1 per cent. He hoped that the target of 1.9 per cent of population ratio would be achieved by July 2003.