11 July 2004	Sunday	22 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

ISLAMABAD, July 10: President Gen Pervez Musharraf has called for a comprehensive approach to have a balance between population growth rate and resources needed for sustainable development in the country.

In his message on the occasion of the World Population Day (July 11), the president said that it was important to promote a shared perception in addressing the cause and effect relationship through appropriate policy initiatives and programmes focusing on individuals, households and communities.

He said that Pakistan had joined the global community in observing the World Population Day and reaffirmed its commitment made at the International Conference for Population and Development (ICPD) at Cairo in 1994.

He said since then though considerable progress had been made, a lot still needed to be done to arrest rapid population growth, address the issue of poverty and to achieve the population stabilization goal enunciated in the Population Policy 2002.

He said there was also a need that initiatives in all social sectors like health, education, women development were undertaken in tandem to achieve the common goal of improving the quality of life of the people.

The population welfare programme in Pakistan had been actively advocating voluntary adoption of small family norm and providing nationwide services with the support of the private sector and civil society, he added

However, the programme needed the cooperation of all segments of society to enhance the motivation for acceptance of small family values as a normal way of life, he stressed.

The President said: "I am happy to note that significant progress has been made in bringing down population growth to 1.96 per cent.

"Even as maternal and infant mortality is on the decline. We still have a long way to go in reaching our goals of providing complete reproductive health care for achieving population stabilization," he said.

He said that population welfare being a complex and multi- faceted task required all embracing efforts to reach every household in the country.

PRIME MINISTER: Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain in his message on the occasion said that the population issue in Pakistan was being approached in conjunction with other social sector initiatives which focused on universal education, health for all, women development and empowerment and poverty alleviation programmes.

"The population welfare programme of the government strives to make family planning and reproductive health services available to all households of the country," he said.

It was being done under a broader approach with emphasis on reduction in infant, child and maternal mortality rates, he added.