ISLAMABAD, May 31: Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz on Saturday said the government had decided to raise spending on social sector to Rs185 billion in the financial year 2003-2004.

He was speaking at the launching ceremony of two atlases on (i) Education; and (ii) Health & Population Welfare Facilities here on Saturday. The atlases have been produced by the Planning Commission’s Centre for Research on Poverty Reduction & Income Distribution (CRPRID) with the financial assistance of UNICEF.

The ceremony was attended, besides the heads of the UN agencies in Islamabad and government officials, by Deputy Chairman Planning Commission and Education Minister Zobaida Jalal.

Deploring the tendency to begin all projects by purchasing vehicles, computers etc., the finance minister said the government would closely monitor the utilisation of funds.

Earlier, speaking on the occasion, Dr Muttawakil Kazi, Secretary Planning and Development Division, said there was need to establish 50,000 schools in urban areas and three schools in each of the 48,000 villages in order to enrol 4.5 million out-of- school children and over 3 million additional children who became eligible to enter class-I each year.

The objective of the stupendous exercise carried out by the Planning Commission staff at a cost equivalent to fewer than two days salary of a consultant was to put together, using the Geographical Information System (GIS), data about the educational and health facilities with the help of scores of maps and graphics.

The decision to publish the atlases, according to Dr Muttawakil Kazi, arose from the realisation in the Planning Commission that poverty had a number of manifestations including lack of income and productive resources sufficient to ensure sustainable livelihoods; hunger and malnutrition; ill health; limited or lack of access to education and other basic services; increased morbidity and mortality from illness; homelessness and inadequate housing; unsafe environment and social exclusion.

The atlases would help decision-makers identify gaps in each Tehsil/district of Pakistan and provide educational and health facilities.

It would also be an insurance against overcrowding of these amenities, as was witnessed during implementation of the Social Action Programme. This is, of course, a subject on which there prevails a studied silence both on the part of the government and the “donor” agencies.

Dr Mushtaq A. Khan, Member, National Commission for Human Development, while presenting salient findings of the material contained in the atlases, observed that these facilities existed sparsely at the time of independence. For example, there were only 9411 schools then. Their number in 2000 stood at 170,500. Nevertheless, the number of illiterates in Pakistan was a mind- boggling 52 million. It was likely to grow because there are not enough schools even to keep abreast of the growth rate of population. Out of 18.5 million children who do get enrolled in schools, 8.5 million drop out.

In the health sector at the time of independence, the facilities included only one medical college with 78 doctors, 186 nurses and about 1,000 health facilities of various types and sizes.

Communicable diseases such as small pox, plague, tuberculosis, scurvy were rampant, taking heavy toll of lives. Now these have become textbook words, thanks to immunisation campaigns against preventable diseases of childhood by 1980s.

The challenges in health sector, Dr Khan cautioned, were still alarming. Pakistan will be a polio-free country very soon but other diseases like malaria, MDR tuberculosis, HIV-AIDS, drug addiction and acute respiratory infections, which needed attention of decision makers, were emerging.

High morbidity rate has a nexus with the rising poverty as such non-communicable diseases as atherosclerosis, ischemia and other C.B. complications, diabetics, cancer increasingly become public health issues, although yet to find a place on the map of the government’s poverty reduction schemes.

As regards children, he noted that one out of 10 infant/child either does not reach its first birthday or celebrate the 5th birthday. Besides, 30,000 women die of birth-related complications.