KARACHI, April 6: More than 45,000 social development organizations (SDOs), with the help of their more than 475,000 employees and volunteers, are carrying out development projects involving nearly Rs16.5 billion in the country annually, says a report.

The SDOs have a member-ship base of more than six million.

The report, “Building bridges: government-non-governmental organizations partnership,” prepared by the NGO Resource Centre, says the government also is carrying out nearly 100 projects in different development sectors — health, education, rural water supply and sanitation, social welfare, women development and special education, and population welfare.

The size of projects ranged between Rs400,000 and Rs117 million a year.

The report said 46 per cent of the projects were in the health sector, 29pc in the education sector, 11pc were in the rural water supply and sanitation sector, eight per cent in the social welfare, women development and special education sectors, and six per cent in the population welfare sector.

The government is carrying out 70 per cent of the projects in collaboration with SDOs. In 43 per cent it is providing technical help to SDOs and in 37 per cent of the projects it was providing training to SDOs for capacity building.

In 16 per cent of the projects the government is helping in developing linkages between NGOs and community-based organizations and donor organizations, in 16 per cent of the projects SDOs are using government infrastructure, and they are getting logistical support from the government in 11 per cent of the projects. The government is providing loans to SDOs in seven per cent of the projects.

The objective of the report is to document all current government policies and programmes pertinent to the citizen sector so that a database can be developed and it will be available to the SDOs. The SDOs can get all information on the government’s projects from the report.

The report says 20 per cent of the projects are in Sindh, 25pc in Punjab, 21pc in the NWFP, 16pc in Balochistan and 18pc in FATA.

The report says at the beginning of the new millennium around 46 million Pakistanis

— one in every three families — live below the poverty line.

It says a new development governance paradigm is emerging around the world that is changing the roles of three sectors — the public sector, private sector and citizen sector.

The report says, according to the new paradigm, the public sector has to mainly concentrate on appropriate policy environment, macro stability and selective investment in physical and social infrastructure.

The private sector is mainly responsible for investment, production and distribution of goods and services and its expanded role now includes investment in, and profitable operation of, infrastructure facilities and public utilities, and the citizen sector is operating as a partner in the coalition for poverty reduction and human development.