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| June 14, 2005 | Tuesday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 6, 1426 |
Call to reduce rate of population growth
ISLAMABAD, June 13: The World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have attributed the 1.9 per cent population growth rate in Pakistan to widespread poverty in the country, and asked Islamabad to lower the rate. Informed sources told Dawn on Monday that the two donors had urged the government to devise a long-term strategy to lower its population growth rate which unofficially was still considered over two per cent.
Initially, the ADB has promised to offer additional Rs387.1 million in 2005, to fund the ministry of population welfare’s new programme to strengthen and expand its services aimed at reducing the population growth rate from 1.9 per cent to 1.5 per cent.
According to details, a new programme will be started to provide quality care and increased access to services for the poorest communities by upgrading reproductive health facilities and human resource development.
It will address the unmet need of family planning, help reduce maternal and infant mortality rate, total fertility rate and population growth rate through the involvement of 478 NGOs and strengthening public private organizations.
The outcome will contribute to improvement in the women’s status and poverty reduction through harnessing NGOs and private sector capacity through their capacity building, training for their coordinators, doctors, paramedics and other personnel of the reproductive health issues.
According to an official document, Pakistan’s rapid population growth rate of 1.96 per cent per annum has exacerbated poverty and negated the impact of development in the last decade.
“While fertility is declining, it has the potential to show the reverse trend given the high-unmet demand (33 per cent) for family planning,” it warned.
“Health status indicators have not improved much over the past decade,” the document said, adding that the maternal mortality ratio was still very high due to poor birth practices at community, primary, and hospital level. Better maternal care would subsequently reduce infant mortality, including that caused by infections and malnutrition.
The new population welfare programme provides a plan for developing an umbrella programme within the institutional infrastructure of the ministry in collocation with NGOs and the private sector.
The donors’ community expected that the ministry of population welfare would implement the communication strategy and specific activities would be developed and launched to meet the requirement of the target population. The main purpose of the activities would be to provide complete and correct information for overcoming inhibitions, fears, doubts and misconceptions about the family planning.
“Billions of rupees have so far been spent by successive governments and the donors’ community to adequately cut the population growth rate and thus reduce the growing poverty, but there is no much progress about it,” conceded a concerned source.
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