LAHORE, March 28: Federal Minister Chaudhry Shahbaz Husain has said that population control was an important issue and needed serious attention. The federal population welfare minister was speaking at a press conference, along with his provincial minister Nasim Lodhi after inaugurating a seminar on ‘Population and Development’ held for women ulema here on Tuesday morning.

Mr Husain said it was necessary to control the population growth rate because it was much higher than the pace of resource development.

The government, he said, was tackling the issue on a priority basis, and had successfully brought down the population growth rate to 1.9 per cent. It was expected to be further lowered to 1.5 per cent by 2008 and 1.3 per cent by 2020, the minister claimed.

He said the government’s population control strategy was based on motivation through awareness and guidance instead of compulsion. Awareness about population control was being created through opinion leaders like school teachers, labour leaders and the ulema. Necessary medical facilities were also being made available free of cost at Multan, Faisalabad and Lahore, he added.

He said provincial population welfare conferences for women ulema would be held in Balochsitan, the NWFP, Sindh and Azad Kashmir within a fortnight, to be followed by a national moot at Islamabad.

He said the population welfare programme was proceeding satisfactorily in Punjab, and it was also highly successful in the NWFP despite the fact that the minister concerned belonged to an opposition party.

He said that master trainers were being trained by the department to educate the opinion leaders on the issue. As many as 3,000 master trainers had been provided training so far and 10,000 more would be trained in the near future, he added.

Inaugurating the conference earlier, the minister said women ulema could play a significant role by creating awareness about increase in socio-economic problems on account of uneven population growth. Federal Additional Population Welfare Secretary Hafeezur Rehman said the high population growth was further aggravating problems like unemployment, housing and law and order.

The government, he said, had decided to involve the ulema in its efforts to help resolve the problem because Islam stressed the need for proper upbringing of the children which was not possible if their number exceeded the resources available with the parents.

He said Islamic countries like Iran, Egypt, Indonesia and Turkey had already controlled the population growth with the assistance of the ulema.

Punjab Population Welfare Secretary Qazi Afaq Husain said that 1.4 billion Muslims constituted 23 per cent of the world population, but had only five per cent share in the GDP because they lagged behind in economic field due to their high population growth. As many as 800 million Muslims were illiterate due to poverty. The Jews, on the other hand, were only 14.6 million in number but controlled the economy of the world because of paying attention to their economic advancement.