ISLAMABAD, Nov 23: Economic policy-making will remain deficient if the poor do not experience the benefit of growth, the resident representative of the UNDP, Onder Yucer, said here on Saturday.
He was speaking at the launching of a project on the “creation of capacity of planning division for poverty reduction through employment promotion and better distribution of income” at the Planning Division.
The project is an attempt on behalf of the ILO and UNDP to assist the government of Pakistan in analyzing the progress of Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) in context of employment generation and human development.
Secretary of Planning Commission Dr Mutawakil Qazi said unemployment or under-employment was the basic problem of countries like Pakistan where market forces were not going to encourage employment generation unless the government intervened.
He also evaded a direct question about the present level of poverty, saying it was not easy to measure it, but said: “Through the policies of the government we were able to contain it.”
Mr Yucer said the role of employment in policy formulation should be reassessed. Information about employment trends in all sectors of the economy can help in creating policies that can ensure benefits to the lives of the poor through access to quality jobs, he added.
He said though employment generation was necessary, human development could only occur when basic standards were met and enforced.
Giving example, he said it was important that minimum standards of occupational health and safety, gender balance in the workplace, employee rights, access to learning and fair wages should be considered if equitable and sustainable development was to occur.
The ILO country director, Johannes Lokollo, said through incorporation of employment as a key objective in the PRSP, the project would provide an effective strategy for employment generation by nurturing policies that could divert the benefits of economic growth towards the poor.
The main aim of the project was to enable the Centre for Research on Poverty Reduction and Income Distribution (CRPRID) to monitor employment, wages and labour market developments effectively in order to understand the trends and causes of poverty in a better way, he said.
He said this would enable suitable sector-specific policy recommendations for reducing unemployment and poverty in the country.
This project would be funded mainly by the UNDP with ILO contributing financially in certain components. Given the ILO’s mandate on employment, the United Nations System in Pakistan has nominated the labour organization as the executing agency in providing support to the PRSP process to ensure that employment promotion was central to the national strategy for poverty reduction.
He said the project would provide institutional support to the government of Pakistan by supporting and building capacity of the Planning Division and the CRPRID. Support to the centre will include direct assistance through national consultants, he added.
He said action-oriented research would be undertaken to analyze the trends in productive employment in both urban and rural settings. This will include sectoral analysis in order to identify the potentially leading sectors and sub-sectors and to devise policies to raise the rate of productive job creation in the economy.
The CRPRID will specifically look at the housing sector, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), employment intensive public sector infrastructure and employment intensive export.
A distinctive feature of this project was to identify and propose specific policy measures for creating increasing employment opportunities for the women labour force and to ensue that gender-related concerns were reflected in the employment strategy proposed in the PRSP.
In addition to this, the project will study the impact in employment of the existing programmes such as the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF), Khushal Pakistan Programme (KPP) and the First Women Bank, and will make recommendations to improve their effectiveness. It will also evaluate some of the specific measures initiated in increasing women empowerment.
He said attention should be paid to the role of labour in the overall growth process especially in identified sectors.
In order to boost decent employment this strategy needs to be reflected in policy formulation by the government in its 10- year Perspective Plan (2001-2011) and the three year poverty reduction strategy (2001-2004), Annual Development Plan and the PRSP.