KARACHI: Trainees told to help reduce population growth rate
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, July 22: Speakers at a function on Monday said that whatever little progress the country made in the economic field was neutralized by the high rate of population growth and it needed to be checked.
They were speaking at the inauguration of a three-day Refreshers Training of Volunteers and Out-reach Workers, organized jointly by the World Population Fund and the Family Planning Association of Pakistan.
Over 55 members of 11 NGOs, from all over Sindh, are taking the training. Many of them are women. Out of the 11 NGOs, two are Karachi based and the rest are working in the interior of the province.
The speakers said that owing to the efforts made by the family planning workers the annual population growth rate that was once over 3.1 per cent, among the highest in the world, had been brought down to around 2.1 per cent, still among the highest in the region.
They urged the family planning workers to continue the good work and achieve the target of 1.9 per cent by 2004 as set by the government.
They said that though over 95 per cent of couples knew about the family planning methods, hardly around 20 per cent of them practised. They urged the workers to make efforts and try to approach and provide services to the that group of couples so that they could practise family planning methods of their choice.
They said earlier it was said that the family planning was against the religion, but many Islamic countries, including Bangladesh, Iran, Malaysia and Indonesia, had successfully brought the population under control.
They said the government had recently handed over the family planning programme from the federal government to the provincial governments, and soon it would be handed over to the district governments.
They said in this way the issues that earlier were referred to Islamabad would be solved in the provincial capitals and soon these would be solved at the district headquarters, and the problems would be solved quickly.
They, however, expressed reservation on the transfer of family health workers to the provincial health departments and said that it might affect their output as the financial health of the health departments was not good.
Syed Khadim Ali Shah, Noor Illahi Arain, Abdul Saleem Memon and others also spoke.
