KARACHI, Nov 9: Sitting outside a government-administered Zakat office, Parveen Naz waits for her turn to cajole a desk worker for the paltry grant to feed her four children and ailing husband.
Naz, 32, a telephone operator who suffers from tuberculosis and looks a decade older due to malnutrition, has been struggling to keep herself and her family alive since she and her spouse were laid off more than two years ago.
Her husband began sniffing heroin after protracted unemployment and left all responsibilities to Naz.
“I would have committed suicide, because at times it becomes intolerable to see my children’s famished faces,” Naz said, despairing of getting much help from the corruption-riddled Zakat office. “But it’s their (children) existence which prevents me from doing so,” she remarked.
Naz said, “I have lost two sons because I couldn’t get medical treatment for them. I do not want to lose the surviving children, but all I can see is darkness ahead.”
Naz’ family is not alone in its misery. Some 50 million Pakistanis or 33 per cent of the population are living in poverty, according to the State Bank of Pakistan’s annual report released last week.
Poverty has risen 13 per cent over the past 15 years, the report found, despite the economy’s skyrocketing performance on paper in the last three years.
Expecting any significant short-term drop in poverty was “simply a pipedream,” according to a sober warning by the State Bank.
The Pakistani economy has performed robustly since 2000 with most major economic indicators beating all-time records. Foreign exchange reserves have soared from a mere 1.97 billion dollars in 2000 to above 11 billion dollars last September; exports grew to 11 billion dollars for the year ended June 2003 and Gross Domestic Production (GDP) grew by 5.1 per cent as compared to 3.6 per cent the last year.
However, it could appear to be strong economic growth has had little impact on the lives of tens of millions of Pakistanis.
“Despite the impressive improvement in macroeconomic fundamentals, the popular perception about the economy amongst media and commentators does not reflect the improvement,” the central bank stated in its annual report last week.
The bank blamed poor economic policies of the previous regimes of now-exiled prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif since 1987.
On the other side, independent economists pointed the finger at the current administration of President Musharraf.
The Social Policy and Development Centre chief, Qaiser Bengali, said, “The government has compiled data for the Pakistan household integrated survey, but, the government is reluctant to make it public, because I am sure that reveals a further increase in poverty.”
He said that boosting public development spending was the only answer. “The debate is not whether poverty is 33 per cent or 36 per cent, but the focus must be on how to eradicate it meaningfully. Only a well-directed and high public development expending could arrest the trend,” he said.
The federal government awarded a record 30 per cent boost to development spending in the annual budget in June to Rs160 billion or 3.6 per cent of GDP.
However, some economists shrug off the increase as inadequate. “Any level of public development expenditure below seven per cent of GDP could hardly make a dent in poverty levels or propel sustainable economic growth,” economist Shahid Hasan Siddiqui said.
The only way to reverse poverty growth would be economic growth of six to seven per cent for the next five to six years, economists and the State Bank of Pakistan agreed.
The governor of State Bank, Ishrat Husain said, “There is no magic wand to eliminate poverty, unless we catch up with sustainable growth rate of six per cent.” —AFP
KARACHI, Nov 9: Sitting outside a government-administered Zakat office, Parveen Naz waits for her turn to cajole a desk worker for the paltry grant to feed her four children and ailing husband.
