Pakistan has slipped in many of its agreed millennium development goals (MDGs), which it had set out to achieve by 2015, and is poised to miss key targets related to human development, panellists at a conference said on Monday.
The government needed to be more active to achieve the goals, they said at the conference on the Current Status of Millennium Development Goals in Pakistan.
The Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO) had organised the conference under its AAWAZ programme.
Of 48 indicators set by the United Nations, Pakistan had committed to meeting 33 indicators relating to poverty, maternal health, HIV, primary education and gender disparity among others.
According to a report of the Planning and Development Commission of Pakistan, the country was on track to achieve seven out of the 33 targets, might struggle to reach three more but the progress on the remaining 23 targets was off-track, the panellists said.
They emphasised the need for urgent measures to improve the standard of education and reduce the mortality rate among mothers and infants.
SPO Chief Executive Naseer Memon presented key findings of the report.
“Inflation, economic stagnation, the tumbling foreign investment and a series of natural disasters could actually have pushed a large number of people below the poverty line; but the official report claims a decline in the incidence of poverty.”
He said achieving the MDGs required political will.
University of the Punjab Gender Studies Department faculty member Raana Malik said the authorities had always been eager to make commitments but they often failed to accomplish them.
Salman Abid, an SPO office-bearer, said the country needed to allocate more resources to achieve the MDGs.
“Institutional limits and lack of commitment are among other factors preventing the country from meeting its commitments,” he said.
Punjab Assembly member Najma Afzal said the mortality rate among children under five years of age had declined.
“The maternal mortality rate declined from 533 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990-91 to 260 deaths in 2010,” she said.
She said the government was committed to helping women and their children at their doorsteps.
Islam Siddiqui from the Education Department said the government, under its Emergency Enrolment Campaign, had set a target to enrol 2.5 million children in the Punjab this year.
He said Rs70 billion had been allocated for providing missing facilities at schools in the province. He said school councils had been set up to resolve problems faced by schools..
Published in The Express Tribune, May 13th, 2014.