BALOCHISTAN, according to various studies, remain the poorest province on the Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index (MPI). Almost 52pc households in the province are classified as poor, which means that over 50pc of province’s population has no or little access to good education, healthcare and has woefully poor living conditions with no proper arrangements for sanitation and no supply of potable water or electricity.

The literacy ratio in Balochistan is dismally low at 39pc. The female literacy rate in certain districts is as low as less than 1pc.

With exception of Quetta, where there are 19 hospitals, all other districts either have poorly-equipped single hospital or in the case of certain districts like Ziarat and Musakhel no hospital at all even at the district headquarters. The number of medical staff in the province is alarmingly low with district Barkhan, Mastung and Musakhel having no doctors for 10,000 people, while districts such as Jaffarabad, Zhob, Turbat and Qilla Saifullah are too depressingly short of medical staff as in these districts too the doctor-to-patient ratio is disturbingly low; there is fewer than one doctor to treat the population of 10,000.

Most of the residential houses are far below the standard as a majority of them (65pc in Quetta and 99pc in Turbat) are mud-houses with lack of basic facilities like the supply of water; only two to three per cent households in districts Jaffarabad, Dera Bugti, Kharan and Qilla Saifullah have inside piped-water supply connections.

Roads and other communication infrastructures in the province are arguably of inferior quality despite allocation of massive funds for their improvement.

The unemployment ratio, too, is appallingly high: almost 33pc people in Balochistan are out of any kind of job, despite willing to work, which is far above the national average which stands at 6.2pc.

Back in January, Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch asked provincial ministers and bureaucrats to make poverty history but they use state funds to buy expensive vehicles for themselves instead of using the same money to alleviate poverty.

The provincial public service commission seems to be dormant without a permanent chairman. The grim situation in Balochistan may change for better if the province is blessed with truly good leadership.

Saad Khosa

Quetta

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2015

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