October 24, 2007	Wednesday	Shawwal 11, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Oct 23: The National Assembly Standing Committee on Population Welfare on Tuesday expressed concern over the nomination of Mushtaq A. Khan as Chairman National Trust for Population Welfare (Natpow) for the second term saying that there were no provision to consider the name of a person for another term of three years.

The committee, which met with its chairperson Gule Farkhanda in the chair, observed that the present chairman had already completed three years in the office and there was no room for relaxation of rules to allow him to continue, a participant of the meeting told Dawn.

The committee directed the ministry of population affairs to appoint a new chairman and unanimously recommended the name of the sitting minister for population affairs, Chaudhry Shahbaz Hussain, for the post. It was noted that the minister used to hold the office in the past as a matter of practice.

The committee expressed displeasure that its recommendations were not taken into consideration while making amendments in the Natpow rules. It discussed restructuring of National Trust for Population Welfare and the ISO certification of Rural Health Services (RHS) centres in detail.

The Committee also recommended that the ministry may establish model Reproductive Health Services Centres in all the four provinces, Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir, and get ISO certification in order to ensure provision of better services to the clients.

The committee noted that the condition of the reproductive healthcare centres in the country was hopeless in all the four provinces. It was noted that there ISO certification was the only way to ensure monitoring of the service delivery in accordance with international standards.

The committee rejected the claim of the ministry that the population welfare programme was already following standards laid down by World Health Organisation (WHO), which are internationally accepted and practised and that these standards are continuously followed up by a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation mechanism.

Ms Farkhanda applauded the role of the minister for population welfare for his devotion and sincerity towards the affairs of the ministry and hoped the ministry would be able to achieve the target set by the government, very soon.

She recommended that the ministry may extended its services in rural and far-flung areas as the women of those area were suffering badly due to non-availability of better health services.

She also recommended that the ministry may approach, the Unfpa for additional funds to get ISO certification of the existing RHS centres.

Earlier, Mohammad Sharif Baloch, secretary, informed that deliberations of the committee could not be included in the proposals of the restructuring of Natpow as the ministry had moved summary much earlier to the prime minister for its restructuring.

However, he assured that the committee would be taken into confidence before proposing any amendment in the role of Natpow in future.

The committee was assured that all the service outlets in the province will be directed to follow the WHO standards and protocols and adopt the best practices of ISO 9001 and 2000 for quality assurance.

It was informed that six selected service delivery points including three in Jhelum, two in Islamabad and one in Talagang had been ISO certified since 2005.

The meeting was attended by MNAs Bushra Anwar Sipra, Liaquat Abbas Bhatti, Rifat Javaid Kahlon, Shabina Talat, Sher Mohammad Baloch, Ruqia Khanum Soomro, Nasira Naseer Rana and Begum Amna Saleem.