Pakistan is likely to miss human development targets set to be achieved by 2015, the Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO) chief executive Naseer Memon said on Thursday. He was speaking at a seminar Current Status of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Pakistan. The seminar was organised by SPO in collaboration with Lahore College Women University (LCWU).
Pakistan had committed to improving 33 indicators out of 48, relating to eradication of poverty, maternal health, HIV, access to primary education and gender disparity. According to the report published by the Planning and Development Commission of Pakistan along with United Nations Development Programme, Pakistan will achieve three out of the 33 targets. The country could achieve seven other targets, but its progress on the other 23 targets was alarming, stated the report.
The panellists stressed that urgent measures were needed to improve education and reduce mother and infant mortality rates. They said the government had to demonstrate more seriousness to achieve the goals.
Memon said “skyrocketing inflation, persistent economic stagnation, tumbling foreign investment and a series of natural disasters could actually have pushed a large number people below the poverty line. However, the official report claims there was a decline in poverty incidence.” He stressed that achieving MDG targets was a matter of political will.
He said various regimes had preferred border security over human security, which persistently depleted the country’s scant resources.
Neelam Hussain, the Simorgh Women Resource Centre coordinator, said “Pakistani authorities are quick to sign onto such international commitments and claim they will achieve them, but lack political will to accomplish them.”
SPO Regional Head Salman Abid said Pakistan needed to allocate additional resources to achieve the goals holistically. Institutional limitations and lack of commitment had put the country behind in meeting the commitments, said MPA Nausheen Hamid
Minister of Population Welfare Department Begum Zakia Shahnawaz said the mortality rate of children under five years had declined. She said the mortality rate had declined from 533 deaths per 100,000 births in 1990-91 to 260 deaths in 2010.
Education Department director Islam Siddiqui and Health Services director Tanvir Ahmed were also present.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 21st, 2014.