ISLAMABAD, Sept 7: Speakers at a seminar here on Thursday said international financial institutions (IFIs) neither had any democratic dispensation nor a vision for collective good and that they were responsible for the increasing poverty and economic inequality in Pakistan.

The event had been organised by ActionAid Pakistan to commemorate the IFIs Action week titled “Pakistan-Bearing the Burden of IMF and World Bank Policies”.

Dr Rubina Saigol, country director of ActionAid, said the people of Pakistan were the worst victims of the policies and practices of IFIs that had resulted in extreme poverty and inequality.

Together being the largest source of development finance in the world, the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have enormous impact on the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, especially in the poorest, developing and transitional countries.

The IFIs, Dr Saigol said, had been providing finance for the projects designed for improvement in essential services such as education, health, water, and sanitation or mega development project in the area of infrastructure development that had strong bearing on the lives of millions.

Founded in the 1940s, the governance structure of these institutions has now become stagnated; their policies are lopsided and the process of the decision-making highly secretive, Ms Saigol observed.

Dr Ahmed Nawaz Hakro of Quaid-i-Azam University’s Economics Department said the IFIs through a very complex process took over the economies of the Third World countries. They had weakened the role of the state, and, through loan conditionalities, added to the woes of the poor nations.

About the IFIs-backed privatisation process in the developing countries, Dr Aly Ercelawn, an economic expert, said privatisation had badly affected the labourers and increased job insecurity.

“In the name of free market and privatisation, the states are no more protecting labour rights. Instead, labour unions have been dismantled through enacting new laws like Industrial Relations Ordinance in order to attract the investors,” he observed.

National labour unions should be connected, at least to the level of South Asia, so that extreme violation of labour rights could be stopped through collective actions, he added.

Khadim Hussain from ActionAid said the IFIs were perusing their old objectives in the name of the Structural Adjustment Programmes.

The WB-funded Left Bank Outfall Drain Project (LBOD), which had affected three districts of Sindh, was also discussed by experts.

Talking about the locals experience of the project, Khadim Talpur, Wajid Leghari and Abu Bakar Sheikh said 2.4 million acres had been destroyed by salinity caused by the project. Instead of giving loan to remodel the project, they said, the WB should spend the money to rehabilitate the affected people.

Mr Talpur said the WB should not take back the loan it provided for the project, but convert it into grant and start a new project to resolve the problems caused by their previous project.

The affected people of Taunsa Barrage Emergency Rehabilitation and Modernisation Project, he said the project had given rise to three major problems: canal closure, displacement and flooding/river erosion. The canals which irrigated the land by drawing water from Taunsa Barrage were closed as a result of this modernisation project. The closure of the canal had not only affected the irrigation process, but also deprived people of drinking water.

Similarly, there was no plan in place to rehabilitate thousands of people displaced by the project.

The project has changed the natural course of the river which has caused land erosion and heavy floods, destroying peoples’ livelihoods and settlements.