KARACHI, Aug 22: Representatives of civil society and concerned citizens expressed mixed views at a conference held on Friday to discuss the Pakistan Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA), a document being prepared by the federal government.

The round table conference on the PPA was organized by a local non-governmental organization, Shirkatgah, to share the findings of the study carried out in Sindh.

Meher M. Noshirwani of the Shirkatgah and Rashida Dohad said that 12 sites, which were considered as the poorest union councils, had been selected in various districts, including Badin (representing coastal zone); Naushehro Feroz; Tharparkar and Khairpur (arid and semi-desert); Mirpurkhas, Nawabshah, Jacobabad and Ghotki (irrigated and water logged); Dadu and Thatta (rain fed and hilly); and Baldia Town and Sanghar (urban).

They said that the poor had no social status. There was a deep sense of deprivation, helplessness, exploitation, frustration, anger and injustice among them. The poor were concerned about lack of irrigation water, falling numbers of livestock, decreasing soil fertility and yield, and growing menace of water logging and salinity, they said.

The speakers were of the view that the poor farmers felt exploited by the landlords and wanted change in land grant policy so the poor could also own land.

Even the distribution of Zakat had flaws. A few people interviewed in Badin said that they had received Rs1,500 in three years, but they had to pay between Rs400 and Rs500 to the Zakat Committee Chairmen to get the cheques.

They said that women were victimized more than men. Excluded from the decision making process, they were defenceless in the face of violence and were subjected to high rate of maternal mortality and illiteracy.

The study observed that there was a large gap between what was supposed to be given and what was actually available. The speakers said that the current system of social protection did not work, and that the police was corrupt, ineffective and often on the side of the rich and powerful.

However, the participants termed corruption, institutional failure, mismanagement, and colonial style of governance the major causes of poverty.

They said that Badin had a major share in oil production, substantial share in gas production and fish catch, yet it was the poorest districts of the country. Its waters had been taken over by a law enforcement agency and its personnel used to take bhatta from the poor fishermen.

The participants said that some international financial institutions had played their part in ruining the economies of the developing countries, including Pakistan. They said that when these institutions were being criticized for their exploitative roles they advised the authorities to conduct such studies.

One of the participants, however, suggested that the findings of the study be widely published in Urdu and regional languages. They demanded that laws dealing with workers be reformulated and made workers friendly. They also criticized special industrial zones, where labour laws were not implemented. Land reforms should be introduced in real sense and policy of corporate farming must be abandoned, they added.

Citing an example of mismanagement and lethargic attitude of the bureaucracy they said that a few years back the Bait-ul-Maal had given Rs100 million for the rehabilitation of bonded labour, but Sindh did not spend its share for years and now the federal government had asked the provincial government to return the unutilized amount.

The government institutions did not have calamity response plans or mechanisms, they said while mentioning that some areas were hit by drought for the last few years and after recent rains they were the worst flood affected areas, proving ineffective response system.

They said that majority of the people had been involved in agriculture, but when two barrages — Guddu and Ghulam Mohammad — were constructed, local people were ignored in land allotments. Construction of the dams on the Indus River; led to unemployment of millions of people involved in agriculture in the kutcha lands along the river banks and the Indus delta had been deprived of its share of water, resulting in sea water intrusion in Thatta and Badin districts and migration of the affected people to other areas, they added.

They alleged that the federal government usually manipulated to form an unrepresentative governments in the province so that the province could be dependent on the federal government for its survival.

Mushtaq Mirani, M.B. Naqvi, Karamat Ali, Najma Sadique, Dr Yasmin Sabeeh Qazi, Nuzhat Shirin, Zulfiqar Halepoto, Dr Sulaiman Shaikh, Noor-ul-Islam, Shagufta Alizai, Dr Aakash Ansari, and others also spoke. Rashida Dohad and Ghulam Mustafa Abro responded to the issues raised by participants.