ISLAMABAD, Dec 10: Participants of the first meeting of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Poverty Alleviation and Employment Generation here on Wednesday cited lack of investment and inadequate growth rate as being major factors for the manifold increase in poverty, officials said.

Sources said that the meeting constituted three sub- committees to deal with the issue urging them to finalize their recommendations within the next four weeks and submit them to the prime minister for final approval.

The first sub-committee would assess the current situation regarding poverty about which there existed differences within various government agencies. The second sub-committee would determine public sector’s role while the third one would look into the government policy towards the private sector.

Sources said that unofficial members of the task force called for evaluating and making the ongoing programmes more effective specially by ensuring transparency in the departments concerned.

Participants of the meeting, sources said, believed that the growth rate could not be accelerated to any significant level during the last 10 years which created negative impact on poverty alleviation efforts. “The government must review its existing policies in this regard and try to increase the growth rate and attract investment with a view to lowering the rising poverty in our country”, said a participant.

“We have told the government that the critical issue of poverty and investment cannot be tackled only by issuing statements and that a correct strategy and its forceful implementation was the need of the house”, he said. He added that rising poverty was causing serious problems to the country’s “social environment” which required serious attention of the people who were at the helm of the affairs.

Sources said that participants were of the view that pubic sector development programmes needed to be strengthened to reduce the level of poverty. “There must be correct data evaluation relating to poverty”, another participant said, adding that without first evaluating the current extent of poverty, it would be difficult to deal with the issue in its true perspective.

An official announcement quoted Minister for Privatisation and Investment Dr Hafeez Shaikh, who presided over the meeting, as saying that the task force should develop practical recommendations within a month for poverty reduction and employment generation. It was decided that the task force would meet on weekly basis to prepare and submit its recommendations to the government within a month.