ISLAMABAD, March 12: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz laid the foundations of Population House at Pak Secretariat here on Saturday.

The building would be ready by 2007 and would house the offices of the Ministry of Population Welfare.

The ministry had acquired 2,357 square yards back in 1985, however, it could not kick off the project due to disinterest by the successive governments. The population house will be built in the F-Block.

Speaking on the occasion, the prime minister said over the years the management of population related issues had achieved immense importance in a country’s progress. He said countries like Iran, Egypt and Bangladesh had achieved phenomenal results in bringing down their population growth rate by taking all stakeholders on board.

On the contrary, he said, the population growth rate of Pakistan stood at 1.9 per cent and every year three million people were adding to the total population of the country, putting extra burden on its limited resources.

He asked Population Minister Ch Shahbaz Hussain to have proactive collaboration with the local level religious leadership in the ministry’s campaign to educate the general masses about the adverse impacts of increased population on the national economy.

In this regard, he also sought private-public sector partnership, as social marketing companies had been playing an important role in controlling population of the country.

Another factor, the minister said, which could have a telling impact, as far as, population control was concerned was women education.

Over the last few years, women have been given a better representation at various levels, and now the government expects that they will play their due role, said the prime minister.

About the overall development in the social sector, the prime minister said the government had increased the budgetary allocations of education, health and population welfare ministries.

Mr Aziz said the government was increasing the number of lady health visitors from 80,000 to 200,000 and launching a comprehensive package for Reproductive Health (RH) issues.

The decline in the population growth rate, he said, would contribute towards improving the economy, creating more opportunities for employment and enhancing resources for poverty alleviation.

Ch Shahbaz said the government was taking every possible measure to achieve the objectives of the population welfare programme. He said the country’s population currently stood at 151 million, a fivefold increase since independence when its population was just 32 million. He said if the current population growth rate (1.9 per cent) remained unchecked, the country’s population would increase to 220 million by the year 2020.

At present, the minister said development indicators of the country reflected a high poverty level, low status of women, low literacy level, high infant and maternal mortality and unemployment levels coupled with a high dependency ratio.

He urged all the social sector partners to join hands in the crusade against poverty, hunger and disease in the country through provision of quality family planning and RH services.

Mr Hussain said overall the vision set in the population policy 2002 was to achieve population stabilization by 2020 through an expeditious completion of the demographic transition that entailed a decline both in fertility and mortality rates.

He said the government had achieved its short goals; bringing population growth rate to 1.9 per cent and Total Fertility Rate (TFR) to 4 births per woman by 2004.