PESHAWAR, Jan 16: A meeting of Unicef counterparts, government departments, representatives of NGOs, civil society and media was held at a local hotel said a statement issued here on Tuesday.

The meeting, entitled “Provincial Strategy” was arranged to consult stakeholders for the formulation of workable strategies for Unicef’s Master Plan of Operation for the period 2004-2008 in Pakistan.

The meeting was presided over by Syed Said Badshah Bukhari, secretary planning and development of the government the NWFP.

The strategy meeting has been planned in the last year of the current programme cycle i.e. 1999-2003, to help learn from current programme cycle experiences and to do better programming during the next programme period to improve the lives of million of children and women of the NWFP.

During the strategy meeting the steps in the next country programme formulation process were explained at length. This was followed by presentations on programme objectives, which have been set out for the next programme cycle. Suggestions were sought from the participants about the objectives and priority areas.

The consultative nature of the strategy formulation process was appreciated by the counterparts, which resulted in a number of useful suggestions from the participants. Unicef will benefit from the participants’ suggestions in formulating and finalizing the next country programme.

Syed Said Badshah, secretary P&D, in his concluding remarks appreciated the UNICEF support to the NWFP and said that all possible cooperation to materialize the objectives of the next country programme cycle.

Farooq Khan, the office in charge of UNICEF Peshawar thanked all workshop participants and said he would welcome suggestions to ensure better government-Unicef-civil society partnership for improving the state of children in the NWFP.