PESHAWAR, April 30: With indications that Pakistan’s population will be doubled during the next 32 years, the population welfare department, NWFP, has chalked out a plan to bring down the population growth rate from 2.19pc to 1.84pc by the year 2008, sources said.

To achieve the objectives of reducing the birth rate from 30.07 per 1,000 people to 25.63, and increasing the contraceptive prevalence rate from 31.67pc to 41.75pc by the year 2008, the number of registered medical practitioners would be increased from 3,310 to 3,460, the sources told this correspondent here on Saturday.

The government had agreed to upgrade the health network in the province and decided to increase the number of rural health centres from 14,000 to 17,000; health outlets from 1,200 to 1,280; the number of Hakeems and homeopaths from 2,210 to 2,260; mobile service units from 19 to 30; and women centres from 240 to 442.

The project with the total cost of Rs2.49 billion at the national level would upgrade the administrative infrastructure at the provincial level along with improving facilities in districts and tehsils.

The international donors had made it clear to the government that without controlling population rate and improving mother and child health, progress and development would not be possible.

The sources said that each year 3.14m people were added to country’s population. As a result Pakistan would need $292 GNP per capita and $4.65 billions investment to create additional GNP of $1.55 billions to the per capita income at the current level of $492 GNP per capita.

The sources said that it could be one of the reasons that the ministry of population welfare had shown interest in assisting the provinces in their efforts of public mobilization against the population growth rate. But at the same time the policy makers should not forget some hard issues about the NWFP, the sources added.

Though the NWFP has high literacy rate of 35.4pc as compared to that of Balochistan’s 24.8pc, it is far less than that of Punjab’s 46.6pc and Sindh’s 45.3pc. It might be a root cause of other adversities like high fertility rate which is 4.7pc in both Punjab and Sindh, while in the NWFP it is 5.1pc, the sources said.

When the literacy rate is more minutely analysed with high fertility rate in case of the NWFP it indicates that fertility rate among illiterate women is 5.1pc, in those having below matric education is 4.1pc, above matric it is 3.6pc and those women having graduation or above qualification the fertility rate is 3.3pc.

In 1998, there were three million children of four years and below, while in 2001 the number shot up to 3.2m. It means they need 19,000 more primary schools, 120,000 primary school teachers and almost 10,000 more doctors. In case the growth rate was not controlled then in 2033, the population of this province would be doubled — 40m with net addition of 54 people per hour, 1,305 people per day and 476,500 people annually.