October 15, 2006	Sunday	Ramazan 21, 1427

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has said that the government is all set to attain most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including 100 per cent literacy rate by 2015.

“We are committed to MDGs for eradicating poverty, providing health and education facilities to all, ensuring gender equality and combating HIV,” he said.

In an interview with Dawn, the prime minister said the government was moving in the right direction for achieving the MDGs set by the United Nations.

“Just take the example of poverty, which is gradually reducing. Four million people were pulled out of poverty in 2004-05,” he said.

He said poverty had reduced by 10 percentage point from 35 per cent to 25 per cent and the international donor agencies had also termed it a ‘good achievement’. In absolute numbers, he claimed, the count of poor persons had fallen from 49.23 million in 2001 to 36.45 million in 2005.

To a question, Mr Aziz said that a number of policy measures had been adopted to improve literacy, and the focus was on backward areas. He said the way he was personally monitoring the progress, most of the districts would have to attain 100 per cent literacy by 2015 to support a national average of 88 per cent by 2015.

He stressed on the need to create awareness about the MDGs among different stakeholders, especially in the private sector.

“It involves motivation and enough funds, and the government is doing this job very seriously, considering that the literacy level in the country is still very low,” he said, emphasising on public-private partnership to achieve broad MDGs objectives.

The prime minister denied that the conditions set by donors, particularly those related to introduction of user fee in public hospitals, were causing problem to the government.

“Since all arrangements are being done on an affordable cost and with full support of the donors, there is no problem dealing with any issue,” he said, adding that subsidies were being offered to different segments of society with the support of the donors.

He said the Ministry of Finance and the Planning Commission had worked out a joint strategy to adequately meet the millennium goals by 2015.

When asked about the assessment of funds required to implement the goals set by the UN, Mr Aziz said the government was regularly disbursing considerable funds to meet the requirements.

He said the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank had enhanced their annual financial assistance to Pakistan. Both were offering over $2.5 billion annually in order to remove poverty and help achieve other economic indicators relating to health, education, rural development, etc, he added.

About reducing child mortality, he said even though intra-national, intra-Balochistan and intra-Sindh disparities widened in the past, on an average there was an improvement of 10 percentage points in the immunising coverage.

In absolute coverage, he said, districts of Punjab dominated the top-10 ranking, with above 90 per cent coverage. Districts of Balochistan, with roughly 40 per cent coverage, were at the bottom, he said, adding that coverage in many of the districts in Sindh and NWFP grew rapidly.

Regarding the national MDG target of greater than 90 per cent set for 2015, the prime minister said that at least 16 districts had already achieved it, and another 50 districts were likely to do so around 2015.

He said disparities in the coverage of safe water supply had narrowed, indicating convergence nationally and provincially. He said the top 10 positions in the coverage were equally shared among the four provinces in 1998 as well as in 2005. However, districts of NWFP and Balochistan shared most of the bottom 10 positions in 1998 and 2005, he said, adding that districts in Balochistan also shared the distinction of being the fastest growing during 2001-05, while the opposite was evident for few districts in Punjab.

Under a broader definition of safe water supply, the prime minister said that nearly 36 districts of the country had achieved the national target (narrowly defined as pipe/hand pump) of 93 per cent set for 2015.

In reply to a question, he said there were many challenges like poverty and unemployment which warranted even more serious efforts on the part of the government and the private sector to achieve broad improvements in the economy.