The Prime Minister's Task Force on poverty alleviation and employment generation will submit its recommendations to the President, General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali in a fortnight.
This was decided in a meeting of the Task Force here on Wednesday, while reviewing the reports of the three sub committees and assessing the steps taken by the government during past four years for the poverty alleviation and employment generation.
The meeting presided over by Minister for Privatisation and Investment and Chairman of the Task Force Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh took into consideration the ongoing status, performance and the capabilities of various stakeholders including Public Sector Development Programme, Pakistan Centre of Philanthropy, Technical Education. & Vocational Training Authority, Smeda, Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal and Khushhali Bank, for formulating the recommendations of the report.
Dr Hafeez Shaikh said that in view of achieving five percent growth in the economy, there was a need to focus targeted programmes for reduction in poverty and creating new job opportunities by extending incentives to the private sector and taking further effective measures at government level.
He said that the government was committed for the welfare of the people and was striving hard to make downtrodden lot the useful citizen of the society through various short, medium and long term programmes.
The Task Force comprises members from the public sector Dr Nasim Ashraf, Chairman NCHD, Dr Ishrat Hussain, Governor State Bank of Pakistan, Javed Sadiq Malik, Secretary Planning & Development, Waqar Masood Khan, Secretary Economic Affairs Division, Dr Ashfaq Hasan Khan, Economic Advisor, Finance Division, Dr A R Kamal, Director PIDE, Dr Nuzhat Ahmad, Director Applied Economic Research Centre, Chairman, Planning & Development, Government of Punjab/Additional Chief Secretaries, Government of Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan and Shasta Hayat Durrani, Additional Secretary (EA), Prime Minister's secretariat and the members from the private sector Farid Rehman, Peshawar, Dr Akmal Hussain Lahore, Dr Salman Shah Lahore, Shahid Kardar Lahore, Dr Mushtaq Mirani, Hyderabad, Ms Sadiqa Salahuddin Karachi and Malik Naeem Khan from Quetta.
The participants opined that there was a need to deal with the poverty at micro level, to tackle with the structural issues promoting poverty and to pass on the benefits of massive reduction in interest rates to the poor people.
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