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| April 16, 2003 | Wednesday | Safar 13, 1424 |
Withdrawal of subsidies to increase poverty, says report
ISLAMABAD, April 15: At least one-third of Pakistan’s population is under poverty line owing to the macroeconomic policies regarding withdrawal of subsidies on food, education and health, says an International Labour Organization (ILO) report presented at a seminar here on Tuesday.
“The ILO has the firm belief that the only sustainable route out of poverty has to be based strongly on employment,” the study says.
The topic of the seminar, organized jointly by the ILO office in Islamabad and the Centre for Research on Poverty Reduction and Income Distribution (CRPRID), was ‘employment poverty nexus for PRSP’.
It was attended, besides officials of finance and planning divisions and PIDE, by representatives of employers and trade unions.
“Nor only the poor are unable to find work, conditions of work also make them poor. They work long hours, in onerous, often hazardous condition,” the study says.
The study says the rate of unemployment hovers around eight per cent, the magnitude of under-employment is even higher- 13 per cent.
The study calls for employment generation, social protection and strengthening workers’ capacity through human resource development.
The Planning Commission deputy chairman, Dr Shahid Amjad Chaudhry, while accepting most of the findings of the study, said the people were extremely vulnerable to shocks such as sickness and unemployment or under-employment.
Realizing this, he said, the government had increased its allocations to Public Sector Development Programme to Rs161 billion in 2002-03.
He expected these to be raised to Rs181 billion next year.
He, however, sounded a word of caution in selecting areas of investment. For example, he noted, the independent power projects with the investment of Rs5 billion had created only 2,000 jobs.
Shoaib Sultan, the head of National Rural Support Programme (NRSP), by way of emphasizing the vital need of people’s involvement in any planning, showed a documentary to depict how the rural support programme had arranged meetings with thousands of women and men in 49 districts to give voice to their problems.
Earlier, the ILO representative in Pakistan, Mr Lokollo, said the study was a refinement of national employment policy prepared by ILO to form part of the government’s ten-year perspective development plan.
The UN resident coordinator, Onder Yucer, urged the necessity of political commitment to full employment. High employment economies, he pointed out, have generally invested in the development of human capabilities, education, health and skills training programmes.
PIDE director, Dr A.R. Kemal, elucidated the linkage between poverty and employment as outlined in the ILO study.
Arguing that Pakistan faces unequal competition in such industries as well as agriculture, Dr Kazi said: “We should follow China where the proportion of labour engaged in modern sector had risen from only 9 per cent to 40 per cent over the past 50 years.”
Ashraf Tabani, representing employers’ federation, while endorsing the suggestion to develop labour-intensive industry, highlighted the role of privatization in shrinkage of employment opportunities by diverting the private sector investment away from establishment new industrial capacity.
Labour leaders, Khurshid Ahmed and Zahoor Awan, criticized the manner in which the workers’ rights of association and bargaining had been whittled down.
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