26 April 2004	Monday	05 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

Dependence on agriculture of rural people could not make any improvement in their economy. On the contrary shortage of water, dry spell cycle, decrease in cultivable area due to soil deterioration, extension of towns and villages , contraction of infrastructure, rising cost of inputs, non-availability of high yield quality varieties seeds to small farmers, un-checked population growth, etc, have together adversely affected the lives of rural people.

The people in such situation seek way of survival in other occupations or move to cities where there is already saturation. Industrialization in the interior could have absorbed the unemployed.

But the damage caused by nationalization and bad law and order shall take time to restore confidence of the investors to establish new units. The pressure could have been relieved had small scale, cottage and agro-based industries received adequate attention.

For such industries the foremost requirement is imparting of skills and availability of resources. Vocational and technical training centres and such other institutions have either been closed or their performance no more attracts parents to send their children to such institutions.

Industrial estates in each district headquarters and industrial parks in selected taluka headquarters were established with much publicity and promises but very few estates eventually took off and those too could not utilize the available capacity. Thus, the efforts of the governments to create employment opportunities at local level failed to bear fruits.

In the mid-80's, the government launched a programme for the uplift of the arid zone. In Sindh, the Sindh Arid Zone Development Authority (SAZDA) was created with regional offices at Sehwan, Mithi and Khairpur.

Social services and development activities were brought under one roof to ensure effective coordinatory and supervisory role. But it was hijacked by vested groups and now it is virtually dead due to administrative and financial mismanagement.

The population growth may be one of the reason for low level of living standards. Population registers growth rate due to declining death rate which has further added to the miseries to sick and their families due to inadequate or expensive medical cover, which the common man cannot afford, the victims have become social and financial liability for the family.

The fact that billions of rupees have been pumped into the rural sector by various governments, but ground realities are bitterly disappointing when compared with the quantum of funds spent. The concept project performance evaluation specially in mega projects seems to have been ignored. The trend of over-estimation is the normal phenomena.

In the recent past a committee formed by Muhammadmain Soomro, the then Governor of Sindh, in one of the mega projects in rural road sector reviewed the rates incorporated in the PC-1 by the project engineers and detected overestimation of two billion rupees, in addition to two billion rupees saving at the stage of rechecking of PC-1 prior to submitting to P&D Department.

Thus rupees four billion would have gone down the drain, had the then governor not played his timely role. Whether consensus decision of the committee would be incorporated by way of modification in PC-I is an other issue.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, in one case of analysis where the game of technicalities and inflated rates by the consultant and project engineers has come on surface.

The aggravation of law and order situation in the interior of Sindh in early eighties gave free passage to the functionaries at local level to play havoc with development projects as could be seen from bad quality of works and full payment of incomplete works.

Similarly, remote monitoring on the pretext of fear of decoits, which in may areas did not exist, caused irreparable loss to quality of services and destruction of forests.

The mental and moral grooming of an individual is possible with education of standard. Unfortunately, rural children have rare access to this facility. The poor level of education has produced educated illiterates.

On the other hand studies have shown that of the two sons, the uneducated has proved to be an asset for the parents who does any kind of job to support the family, whereas the educated youth has turned out to be a liability as he refuses to work in the field or do any manual job for the fear of changing the texture of his soft hands.

The frustration and sense of deprivations through which our so-called educated rural youth is passing has given rise to psychological and social problems. Rising trend of suicide in youth, addiction to drugs and involvement in crime and other social evils are the living examples.

Rural women folk do all kinds of work. Wemen,s day begins at predawn with crunching, if the family is lucky to have cattle and end up by taking leftover bites of bread of bowl of porridge.

Their traditional role of housekeeping has extended to collect fire wood, fodder work on farms. The social taboos ignorance, financial constraints, inadequate education facilities and non-availability of lady teachers in rural girls schools have not opened the doors of literacy for them.

Like males the treatment of ailments which may be apparent symptoms of chronic diseases is found in taking cheap pain relieving tables and if pocket allows, administration of drip is considered to be panacea for any illness.

The apathy of the inhabitants of rural population may partly be attributed to the centuries-old system. But the planners, technocrats, executives and monitors cannot claim exclusivity.

They are required to play the role of critical examination of any project concept with regard to feasibility and viability of the project, analysis, design and estimates, quality of work and better services. The issues which are required to be addressed are summarized as follows:-

The scope of SAZDA be limited to agriculture, afforest-ration (especially drought resisting breading indigenous plants or successfully experimented in other regions of the same soil texture and climate, water and cattle health services. The emphasis should be on research and demonstration plots and training.

The closed vocational and technical training centres should be revived with the facility of computer training. Similarly the performance of technical training institutes and close monitoring to ensure discipline and quality education is required.

The small scale industrial sector, which requires less fixed capital investment uses indigenous technology and raw material but generate more employment opportunities, thus helps to reduce migration to cities, should be encouraged.

The scarcity of skilled people in rural areas and whatever skill they have are of poor quality and hardly suited to market demands. Hence there is need to start crash training programmes. The ignored huge training complex in mining occupation at Lakhra need to be activated. The human resource development programmes should be given top priority.

The concept of accountability be initiated at the stage of preparation of PC-I by committees comprising officials with sound technical and comparatively good reputation in respective department, qualified men from public and private sector e.g. engineering universities, Pakistan engineering council, institute of engineers be associated in the committees, which should also monitor quality of works.

Population control should be top priority. It requires special attention because the factors which contribute to birth control, such as education among women folk, employment outside home, opportunities for enjoying leisure, greater social mobility are comparatively few.

The gigantic task can not be achieved through electronic or print media, sign boards and posters at public places alone because the population to whom this message is addressed is either illiterate or does not have access to electronic media and rarely visits towns.

The disease of hepatitis and TB are on the rise amongst the poor. Polio has not been fully eradicated despite large expenditure. Daily intake of calories is inadequate. Majority are deprived of clean water facility.

Treatment of hepatitis and TB, if not detected at early stage, is costly as well as of long duration which common man cannot afford. Resultantly a victim becomes a source of spreading this disease to other members in the family.

The performance of the officials of the EPI and other health projects require detailed review in order to learnand improvement. Review is required of big projects in education, agriculture, irrigation, forestry, fisheries, coastal development, social services and infrastructure sector.

The role of NGOs in women enlightenment and empowerment issues has not extended beyond cities and suburbs. In certain cases they may have been able to reach selected villages, but practically it will be difficult for them to cover the whole country.

The concerned government agencies have, therefore, to play their role effectively. Every year billions of rupees are allocated for social services but what share of these reaches the poor is the main issue.

Percentage of funds earmarked for construction or maintenance actually spent on site and quality of works will not be achieved without breaking the nexus of consultants engineers and contractors who are the real beneficiaries. Here lies a challenge for mentors, managers and monitors.

(The writer is the Secretary, Food, Sindh Government.)