January 4, 2003	Saturday	Shawwal 30, 1423

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MULTAN, Jan 3: Education can play more effective role in birth control than mere promoting contraceptive use to check an explosive increase in population which is 2.4 per annum in the country.

This was the unanimous observation of the speakers at the inaugural session of a two-day workshop ‘Modern Techniques in Contraceptive Marketing’ here on Friday. A large number of officials from private and public sector organizations working in the field of birth control were present on the occasion.

Speaking to participants, Population Welfare provincial secretary Javed Malik said the experience showed that literature and educated people responded more positively to the use of contraceptive as compared to the illiterate folk.

He underlined the need of more focus on girls’ education as this would not only delay their underage marriages but awareness would also help them to understand better the means of birth control.

Director in Federal Population Welfare Ministry, Dr Arshad Mehmood, said if the population kept on increasing at the current rate it would exceed from 195.5 million in the year 2020.

He said though Pakistan constituted only 0.6 per cent of the total area of the world, its population share was as high as 2.3 per cent. He said 4.2 million children had born in 2001 while 1.2 million people of different age groups died during the same year. “This means the country’s population increased in that year by six people in a minute”, he said.

The global ratio of contraceptive use among women was 60 per cent while it was 30 per cent in Pakistan as against 55 per cent in Egypt, 73 per cent in Iran and 49 per cent in Bangladesh, he said.

Mr Mehmood said as much as 3.3 million people of the workforce were unemployed at present due to the population explosion in the country.

Around 55 million people were living in a one-room house while 42 per cent of the total population were living below the poverty line, he said and added that 54 per cent people had no access to the safe drinking water.

He informed the gathering that there were 44,000 primary schools in the country in 1981 when the illiterate population was 22 million. In 2002, the number of primary schools had risen to 169,00 but the number of illiterate had also increased due to a sharp increase in population.

There was only one doctor for 1,500 people and a nurse for 4,000 people in the country, he said. Beside the population welfare department officials of 13 districts of south Punjab, officials of Jhang and Faisalabad were also present on the occasion.