Upswing in growth

Prime minister Shaukat Aziz's statement at an economic forum in Jeddah that Pakistan is poised to achieve a growth rate of about eight per cent in the next few years is encouraging.

The statement is based on an objective assessment of the state of the economy, which has witnessed a turnaround in the past couple of years. In this, credit goes to both the government and the external conditions that went in its favour and allowed for such an economic upswing.

However, projections indicate that an investment of Rs2.6 trillion would be needed annually for the growth target of eight per cent to be achieved. The government also hopes that progress towards the target would also help reduce the poverty rate in the country which currently stands at about 33 per cent of the population, the highest in South Asia.

Pakistan's current poverty reduction strategy seems to be based on the premise that growth alone is necessary and sufficient to reduce poverty. However, this is not entirely the case.

Economic growth is only one pillar of the plan to fight poverty. Other areas that need to be tackled are improving governance and devolution, investing in human resource development and targeting the poor and the vulnerable. This is an area in which the government has not delivered according to expectations.

In addition, a number of issues have to be taken into account to attract the level of investment the government is hoping for in the coming years. The first challenge before the government is to tackle the difficult problem of law and order.

The government needs to be more serious about the deterioration in the law and order situation all over the country, especially in urban areas. In addition to a rise in terrorist activity, the crime rate has also gone up in the past couple of years.

Despite pouring billions of rupees on various law-enforcement outfits to fight crime, there is very little to show for it. Armed robberies, thefts, kidnapping, assaults and petty crime have all registered a visible increase.

In addition, politically motivated violence as well as acts of terrorism have also dented the country's image among foreign investors. To add to this are the problems arising out of lack of proper infrastructure.

More attention needs to be paid to ensure that adequate arrangements exist for power, water and other facilities for investors interested in setting up industries or doing business in the country.

While a lot has been done in this regard in the past couple of years, a lot more needs to be done to remove the inadequacies and absence of infrastructural facilities and services.

At the same time, all these efforts will not amount to much if adequate investment is not made in skill development. The country may have a very large human resource base but there is a shortage of technically skilled people.

This is an area where the government has to redouble its efforts. This initiative will create employment, which will help alleviate poverty, and, at the same time, attract investors willing to use our cheap and skilled labour.

In the absence of this labour, it would not be possible for Pakistan to further strengthen its industrial and economic base. The strategy to increase the country's growth rate will have to take into account all these factors otherwise it will be hard to obtain the desired results.

A question of intelligence

So America has a new spy chief. Subject to confirmation by the US Senate, Mr John Negroponte will be the Bush administration's top intelligence director, overseeing the working of 15 agencies.

A former US ambassador to the UN, Mr Negroponte has been involved with intelligence for 40 years. He was on President Reagan's National Security Council and was ambassador in Honduras in 1981-85 when the Iran-Contra affair rocked the Reagan administration.

The need for America to have one chief overseeing the functioning of all secret agencies had been felt for a long time. But it was the disaster surrounding the Iraq war that forced the congressional investigation committee to recommend the creation of such a post.

The noise and fury about Iraq's non-existing weapons of mass destruction has highlighted two points: one, satellite surveillance and high-tech eavesdropping are not an exact means of an accurate assessment of enemy strength.

The 15 intelligence agencies have overlapping jurisdictions and often operate in a spirit of rivalry. The result is a collection of a mass of data all of which many not necessarily be of value.

In fact, the sheer amount of data so collected creates problems of its own when it comes to sifting it. Two, like their British counterparts, the US agencies distorted and doctored the intelligence data to insist that Iraq possessed WMDs.

In the words of former CIA chief George Tenet, the existence of Iraqi WMDs was a "slam dunk". Similarly, former Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the UN Security Council intelligence data which he knew to be unreliable.

The task before Mr Negroponte will be to ensure that a profusion of intelligence does not prove counterproductive and, more important, intelligence chiefs do not have an agenda of their own.

It has now been confirmed beyond doubt that the necons were determined to attack Iraq and expected the CIA and other agencies to support them, even if this meant misleading the president.

Despite a $40 billion budget, Mr Negroponte, lacking specific powers, will have difficulty in dealing with assertive Pentagon and CIA chiefs. But he will control the purse and will have access to the president. With these two advantages, one can hope, Mr Negroponte will be able to stop America's intelligence agencies from becoming a government within a government.

Managing hospital waste

The news from Peshawar that local health authorities have been asked to make optimal use of the city's incinerators is the latest in a series of moves by the NWFP government aimed at regulating the management of hospital waste.

Indeed, it is not only the NWFP that is feeling the effects of the unhygienic, haphazard waste disposal method practised by medical units. Other provinces, too, especially Punjab and Sindh, are suffering the consequences of their inability to enforce waste management rules.

The root of the problem lies in the clinical staff's failure to separate the waste at source. The result is that infectious and risky material, including used syringes, urine bags, even body parts, is dumped in open grounds along with regular waste.

Much of the contaminated medical equipment is then gathered by scavengers, and subsequently recycled and sold. This mode of disposal inevitably causes dangerous pathogens to be transmitted to unsuspecting patients, and is largely responsible for the growing incidence of blood-borne diseases in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the handful of incinerators installed in various cities remain either underutilized or are in poor working condition that prevents their optimal use. With 250,000 tons of medical waste being produced annually across the country - and this figure continues to grow - it is imperative that the government take immediate steps to rectify the situation and put pressure on medical units to adopt a methodical and effective strategy aimed at proper waste disposal.

This would mean educating hospital staff on sifting methods and the shared use of incinerators. However, taking cue from other countries that are opting for more environment-friendly methods of biomedical waste disposal, health authorities here should pursue similar options that are less of a health threat to those coming in contact with the noxious fumes of faulty incinerators.