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HYDERABAD, Feb 4: South Asia Partnership representative Amjad Nazeer has said that 35 to 40 per cent population of the country is living below poverty line.
He said that in Sindh and south Punjab, 15 million people were living in abject poverty.
He was giving a presentation at the inaugural session of a three-day seminar on “Causes of Poverty and Solution,” organized at a local hotel on Tuesday by the SAP, Pakistan.
Mr Nazeer said that due to poverty, 80 people had committed suicide in Sindh in January 2003.
Deploring that no official figures were available in Pakistan about poverty, he pointed out that only 2.7 per cent of the national budget was allocated for education and two per cent for health.
He said majority of the people were deprived of basic facilities and added that the extent of poverty could be gauged from the facts that the unemployed people were selling their blood and kidneys and the poor people were prepared to offer their children for sale.
Quoting survey reports, the SAP representative said that Japan was the most developed country of the world in respect of human development whereas the USA was most developed as far as weapons of mass destruction were concerned.
DRAINGE SCHEMES: Under the Hyderabad Development Package, drainage schemes were inaugurated in various union councils of the Latifabad taluka here the other day.
Talking at gatherings, Latifabad Taluka Nazim Abdul Jabbar Khan, who inaugurated the schemes, said these schemes would help resolve the problem of sewage in the taluka.
He, however, said funds allocated were not sufficient to resolve water and sewage problems.
He said Nazims of union councils and officers concerned had already been asked to improve sanitary conditions in the taluka.
The Nazim said efforts were also being made to beautify parks.
CONDOLENCE: The Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences faculty members, at a condolence meeting held here on Tuesday, expressed grief on the demise of Ahad Yousaf, former provincial minister.
COURSE: A six-day course on “Autocad-2000, Understanding and Application in Engineering” was inaugurated at the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro, on Monday.
