ISLAMABAD, July 8: Federal Minister for Population Welfare Chaudhry Shahbaz Hussain on Friday said the ministry will train 13,000 religious leaders throughout the country for effective family planning programmes. Speaking at a press conference at the Press Information Department here, the minister highlighted the programmes the government had organised in connection with the World Population Day being celebrated on July 11. The theme for this year’s world population day is “Equality in Gender”.

A special curriculum is being developed with the assistance of religious scholars and people expert in population studies, which will be used as training modules, the minister said.

“Within next six months everything will be in place, as the ministry has already started recruiting religious leaders for training that will last for three years,” the minister said in response to a question.

Talking about the programmes organized in connection with the World Population Day, the minister said this year the ministry had involved provincial as well as local governments in the event.

The major thrust of the programmes will be on awareness raising and all the stakeholders have been asked to organize their programmes in this regard.

About the population growth rate projections, the minister said at present it stood at 1.9 per cent and the government wanted to bring it down to 1.3 per cent by 2020, he said.

“It is really a great challenge to everyone of us and we have to make it sure that we achieve our targets for a prosperous country,” the minister said.

He said the overall development efforts of the government were aimed at improving the quality of life of the people and poverty alleviation. Ch Shehbaz Hussain said population issues had multi-sectoral and cross-cutting effects, which needed to be looked at holistically.

Replying to a question, the minister said the government had included women in all walks of life particularly in the country’s politics so that they could play their effective role in the decision-making process.

To another question, the minister said at present the ministry had stopped giving funds to the non-government organizations (NGOs) working in this sector. “The ministry has virtually stopped releasing funds to any kind of NGOs and carrying out a scrutiny to determine which are genuine organizations,” the minister said. He said a list of blacklisted NGOs will be made public soon.