KARACHI, Sept 22: The Counsellor (Development) of the Canadian High Commission, Rolando Bahamondes, has called upon the government organizations to adopt a gender sensitive approach to development.

He was delivering the key-note address at inaugural session of a two-week workshop on “Gender Responsive Budgeting”, organized by the Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC) at its premises here on Monday.

“This workshop is the first effort to create awareness about gender budgeting in Pakistan. It is a timely and much needed initiative. But, much more remains to be done in this respect,” Rolando remarked.

The government, civil society, research institutions, the international donor community, all have a role and a responsibility in this regard, he added.

Mr Rolando said that various teams of trainers would have to be developed enabling them to build the technical capacity of the wide range of stake-holders, which possess very uneven levels of knowledge and skills.

He stressed that the training for trainers should be an ongoing effort as the knowledge needs of stake-holders evolved and the gender budgeting process unfolded. This would allow the trainers to further upgrade their knowledge and training skills from time to time, he added.

“By the same token, we need to develop simple, clear, user- friendly resource materials that will increase the commitment and facilitates the participation of the wide variety of stake- holders in Pakistan,” the counsellor said.

Mr Rolando was of the view that the whole public sector budget could not be immediately engendered. “Why can’t we concentrate first in one or two sectors that are critical to gender equality such as health and education,” he remarked.

He claimed that the Canadian High Commission was assisting the government of Pakistan in its objectives of pursuing gender equality.

He said that achieving gender equality was a crosscutting theme as well as one of the three key pillars guiding the implementation of the development assistance programme in Pakistan. “It is the reason, why we have become involved in efforts to introduce gender budgeting here in Pakistan,” he added.

Mr Rolando pointed out that the gender budgeting initiatives had also contributed towards making women’s work economically visible and had provided policy-makers with data and analysis on the differential impacts of social expenditures on women and men.

He said that the gender budgeting was also a tangible way to engage in debates that were likely to enhance their empowerment rather than continuing tinker at the fringes of social welfare policies.

Mr Rolando was of the view that the government ownership of a gender budgeting process was essential for the sustainability and success of the whole effort.

In her address, Katrin Schneider, an economist from Germany, said that the gender responsive budgeting could play a significant role in the process of achieving the millennium development goals, as it would help making resource allocation more transparent and improve targeting of limited resources.

The approach, she added, could also be used to highlight the gap between policy statements and the resources committed to their implementation, thus, holding the government accountable to ensure that public money was spent in more gender equitable ways.

Sindh Secretary Information Mahtab Akbar Rashidi, who was the chief guest on the occasion, said that women had to be taken along for achieving progress in the country.

She was of the view that the talk of the gender responsive budgeting was not at all aimed at undermining the rights of the men.

Ms Rashidi referred to the contributions of the women towards the development process in the country.

Earlier, the Managing Director of SPDC, Dr Kaiser Bengali, presented the welcome address. He also spoke about the aims and objectives of the training workshop.—APP