KARACHI, June 8: Mr Masood Ahmad, the director-general of the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID), announced on Wednesday the release of Rs802 million (7.5 million pounds) grant for health and population welfare in Pakistan.

Addressing a press conference at the residence of the Deputy High Commissioner of Britain in Karachi, Mr Masood said that it was the fourth such grant in a series of eight that involves a payment of $60 million to be given by the DFID over a four-year period, from 2003 to 2007.

All these grants, he said, would be utilized in the seven national health and population programmes of health and population welfare ministry. These are national programme for family planning and primary health care (the lady health worker), national tuberculosis programme, malaria control programme, the nutrition programme and the population welfare programme.

Mr Masood said the British grants, for which an instalment was released on Wednesday, were linked to the commitment made by Pakistan to increase budgetary allocations for health and population, to strengthen the policy framework and to improve the financial management and procurement systems of the health and population welfare ministries. He informed journalists that in last three years, the DFID’s development cooperation with Pakistan had increased substantially.