September 19, 2006	Tuesday	Sha'aban 25, 1427

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PESHAWAR, Sep 18: A country-wide network of 166,000 grassroot-level organisations would be established in 1,863 union councils under the first phase of the federal government’s Rs 9.8 billion rural poverty alleviation project.

According to officials, the project would be carried out simultaneously in 45 districts. It was approved by the central development working party (CDWP) on May 20.

Balochistan’s 11 districts, nine districts each of Sindh and Punjab, three of the Northern Areas and 13 districts of the NWFP have been selected for the foreign-funded Rural Poverty Reduction Through Social Mobilisation Project for which the major contribution of Rs6.6 billion would come under the IDA assistance.

An amount of Rs 600 million would be provided as grant by some bilateral donors, while the federal government would contribute Rs2.6 billion for the project which would be completed in three years.

The project is in line with the federal government’s poverty reduction strategy paper and medium-term budgetary framework for 2005-10.

Of the estimated cost of the three-year project, Rs9.1 billion would be spent on social mobilisation, while audit of the expenditure incurred under the project would be conducted from an independent private sector firm.

According to officials, the project, whose PC-1 has been approved, would be launched soon after finalising certain issues being considered by the federal and provincial authorities.

The project’s is aimed at reducing the ratio of rural poverty to 13 per cent by 2015.

According to federal government’s own account, one in four Pakistanis is poor and one in every two is vulnerable to experiencing poverty in near future.

Officials said that the project to reduce rural poverty through social mobilization would focus on 1,863 union councils, falling under the jurisdiction of the 45 selected districts, where some 2.5 million households would be targeted for forming 166,954 community organisations ‘on the internationally recognised principles concerning social mobilisation campaigns’.

Through social mobilisation and formation of community organisations, sources said, poor segments of the society would be organized with an objective to develop human resource base at the grassroots level to ensure best use of the available resources and generate capital by promoting a culture of saving.

To make this happen, said a well placed official of the provincial government, series of dialogues with communities would be held to organize them into broad based democratic organisations and from them people would be selected to impart training for building managerial and technical capacity.