KARACHI, March 12: The Sindh Population Planning department is recruiting 41 women doctors on a one-year contract. They would be posted at various reproductive health service centres in the province.

Speaking at a press briefing on Friday, provincial Minister for Population Welfare Imtiaz Ahmad Shaikh said that more than 610 doctors had applied for the posts.

Pointing out that the recruitment was an internal arrangement, he said if at a later stage these doctors were required to be offered regular jobs, they would have to appear and pass the Sindh Public Service Commission examination.

The minister said that the department was also organizing awareness-raising conferences for the local bodies leadership to highlight the issue of unchecked population growth in the country. In the first phase, he added, the conferences were being held in three districts - Sukkur, Karachi and Hyderabad.

The first conference will be held at Sukkur on March 31. Nazims and naib nazims of the district and its talukas, and women councillors would be participating in the conference.

He said that the department was involving local government leaders so that, on the one hand, they could have a sense of ownership of the programme and, on the other, they could keep a better watch on the ongoing projects.

Since they are working at the grassroots level, they could easily convince people, he maintained.

Imtiaz Shaikh said that the department was also planning a door-to-door campaign to create awareness regarding population planning and reproductive health. The campaign would be launched in three districts - Hyderabad, Shikarpur and Karachi. He said that Sindh would pioneer this kind of a programme in which NGOs would also be involved.

The minister was of the view that although the rate of population growth had been brought down from above two per cent to about 1.96 per cent through sincere efforts and hard work, further hard work was needed to curtail the rate to 1.9 per cent, a target planned to be achieved by December 2004.

He said that usually the growth rate in Sindh appeared slightly higher than the average at national level owing to the influx from other areas. However, he added, the trend this time remained at par with national growth rate of 1.96 per cent.

He stressed the need for joint efforts by the government and NGOs to achieve the target, saying that the present growth rate was still among the highest in the region.

The minister dispelled the impression that population planning was in conflict with religion, and pointed out that people in Muslim states, like Bangladesh, Iran, Egypt, Malaysia, etc., were using contraceptives for the purpose.

Indicating that he was holding meetings with ulema of various schools of thought in this regard, he said that the department would soon be organizing an ulema conference with an aim of removing any misgiving, misconception or ambiguity in this respect.

He emphasized on efforts to promote inclination to contraceptives and bring about an improvement in the delivery mechanism so that people could have knowledge and easy access to the products of their choice.