Pakistan being a developing country has a fairly big
score of poverty, as one-third of its population is poor. The responsibility of
this fairly big score can’t be placed on missing government initiatives as they
exist in good number.
A
share of GDP, that is 1.86%, has been allocated for this humanly service, but
unfortunately this flow of money is without any strategic framework. Supporting
different programmes, loyal members of these programmes always come up with
overwhelming figures of poverty reduction. But a sensible and critical review
of them give quite an opposing picture, whose canvas neither fits in the
promises made by initiators of such programmes nor the situation in which the
impoverished part of our nation lives.
Just
giving a review of what we have earned through these government initiatives, it
is worth mentioning that 4.966 million people have benefited. And just giving a
thought back to previous years, 2.919 million people had benefited in 2008 and
2009 from all such programmes in toto.
What
comes to one’s mind is that have the initiatives produced any difference? or
does the state of poverty remain at the same level where it was?
Looking
at recent reports produced by think tanks like the Sustainable Development
Policy Institute (SDPI), the argument is that the measures taken by the
government, though good in quantity, are not good in quality.
A
proof can be the SDPI’s calculation of district-level poverty. Its report establishes
that poverty has increased from 27% (45.9 million people) to 33% (50 million)
in the past five years. Why poverty has increased, if until now, around 4.9
million have benefited from the government’s social welfare programmes, who are
on record.
The
reason is lack of accountability and corruption in welfare programmes. In the
case of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), there is no proper
accountability mechanism to monitor and check whether funds are properly
distributed among the needy. Actual recipients of grants may not be all those
who are actually on record. Poverty rather than being reduced is still on the
increase.
If
the ratio has increased instead of decreasing, then how can one say that these
programmes are still delivering results? In one of the talk shows on a TV
channel, BISP Chairperson Farzana Raja said if this programme continued at the
present pace for five more years, poverty would come down to 20% in the
country.
On
the contrary, poverty has already increased six percentage points in the past
five years, and if BISP has been running efficiently, then poverty should have
at least remained static.
Apart
from this, there is no guarantee that these social security programmes will
remain in place after the upcoming elections.
According
to recommendations given at a seminar on social security organised by SDPI,
some strict and serious steps should be taken in a bid to tackle poverty. These
include mapping of fiscal resources that need to be generated, efficient
institutional arrangements to ensure effective delivery, establishment of
reliable monitoring mechanisms to combat fraud and long-term policy development
goals.
Considering
and executing such measures efficiently might prove to be an essential step in
efforts to reduce poverty substantially in the next five years.
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