According to a news report, the Prime Minister's Task Force on poverty alleviation and employment generation has decided to submit its recommendations to the President, General Pervez Musharraf, and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, in a fortnight.
The decision, in this regard, is reported to have been taken at its meeting last week while reviewing the reports of the three sub-committees and assessing the progress in the efforts in that direction during the past four years.
Presided over by its Chairman, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, the Minister for Privatisation and Investment, the Task Force also assessed the contribution and capabilities of contributors, including the Public Sector Development Programme, Pakistan Centre of Philanthropy, Technical Education & Vocational Training Authority, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority, Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal and Khushhali Bank, in order to formulate its recommendations.
The news report, under reference, also has it that while reiterating the government's commitment to the welfare of the masses and its determination to transform them into useful citizens of the society, Hafeez pointed to the desirability of focusing targeted programmes through incentives to the private sector and through increasingly effective measures.
In so far as the overall mood of the meeting is concerned, it will appear to have been understandably stimulated by the signing of Saarc Social Charter, at its 12th Summit in Islamabad the other day.
This should leave little to doubt the due emphasis reportedly laid by the participants on the need of dealing with poverty at micro level, that is, by tackling the structural issues in combating poverty, particularly from the approach of passing on the benefit of massive reduction in the interest rates to the poor people.
In fact, the Saarc Charter which encompasses the plethora of amassing social problems in South Asia, primarily converging on poverty, throws ample light on how best to tackle this problem of problems as effectively and efficiently as warranted by the worsening circumstances.
There can, of course, be no denying the appropriateness of the constitution of the Task Force and the reach of its constituents under the conditions obtaining in the country.
For, in its present form, it comprises members drawn not from the public sector alone, but also from the private sector, including non-governmental organisations with a passion for social development in education, health and other vital areas.
It will, however, be noted that despite increasing emphasis on poverty reduction, as intensified from the post-nine/eleven foreign-aided efforts, a great is still left to be desired.
Viewed in this perspective, worth serious pondering should appear to be the need of making a bold departure in the policy approach to poverty reduction.
Some indication of it was provided in a lecture Dr Hafeez Pasha, UN Assistant Secretary General, delivered on 'Pro-Poor Policies for Development' at the Karachi University in May last year.
While pleading the case for virtual reversal of the cautious policy approach for sustainable growth followed over the three earlier years, he pointed to the urgency of adopting an expansionary fiscal policy, as a sort of a tactical shift.
The strongest argument he put forward for a bold departure from the past was the urgency of putting in place an in-built mechanism in economic strategy to address staggering poverty in the country.
As for the fear in moving further with expansionary policy, this should appear to have been countered by the low enough inflation, record high reserves and confidence-inspiring macroeconomic indicators the policy makers and managers of the economy continue fondly to gloat about.
It will be recalled that, then supporting his ideas in these columns, we had pointed out that the shift he called for had actually started being pursued, with reference to provision of the missing links in development efforts towards revamping the rural sector, where essentially belongs agriculture with its tremendous potential and which, unfortunately, has turned into the breeding ground of crippling poverty.
Hopefully, efforts now being made on correcting this distortion, can be intensified by a marked shift in financial assistance from IMF and World Bank for 'Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility' (PRGF).
Now that poverty reduction has become the goal of the assistance programmes of the multilateral agencies, it would be in the fitness of things for the government to increasingly focus all encompassing rural development in a big way.
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