PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Population Welfare Department will extend the project of employing religious scholars for creating awareness and favourable public opinion regarding family planning and reproductive health to the whole of province after the encouraging results from the four project districts.

A statement issued here on Tuesday quoted family planning director Imran Shah as saying that PC-1 for extension of the project to entire province had been prepared which will be sent to the federal government after approval from the provincial government.

He said under the project 1,050 religious scholars would be engaged in over 1,000 union councils of all the districts of KP for creating awareness about family planning. He said services of one clergyman would be hired at each union council and, if need be, more than one.

“We initially started advocacy campaign in four districts with support of 21 religious scholars/ulema as they have a great influence on the community at large and it has been a huge success,” he said.

He claimed that KP was the first province to have developed population welfare policy after devolution of power under the 18th constitutional amendment.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2018