PESHAWAR, Sept 3: The NWFP Senior Minister Sirajul Haq has urged the international donor agencies to extend practical and sincere support for uplifting the masses in developing countries.

He said that it would also help in enhancing confidence of people and governments in these world bodies and would bring international community closer, said an official handout.

He was presiding over a meeting attended by the visiting World Bank team at Civil Secretariat on Saturday, to discuss improvement of social sectors in the province and provision of WB assistance.

The senior minister said that the only thing we needed was certain practical financial support not in words, as he said, mere proposals or recommendations could not enable governments in eradicating backwardness, poverty and unemployment in developing regions. However, he said, only concrete steps and reforms could lead to a positive social change.

He said the MMA government was sincerely endeavouring for socio-economic uplift and improvement in the standard of life, wherein effective measures were needed for improving service delivery system.

He said fruitful results of all such steps were showing up but the main hurdle faced in this regard was that of resource constraints.

He regretted that despite all efforts and requests made for financial support to federal government, the provincial government was combating the challenges while no practical assistance was being provided from any quarter.

He said the NWFP government was justified in demanding the fulfilment of the promises made by the federal government.

Talking about education, the minister said enrolment ratio in our schools had been considerably increasing due to waiving of school fees up to matric and provision of free textbooks to the students were playing their part.

He said our steps in health, water supply and other social sectors were aimed to provide all civic facilities to the people at their doorsteps and they had not to travel to big cities for enjoying the same.

He expressed confidence that the World Bank authorities would come up with a package beyond their recommendation for financial support to social sectors in the NWFP.