The happy tidings Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund Chief Executive Kamal Hayat gave the other day, of expanding current projects with special emphasis on education and health sectors, should go a long way towards increasing public confidence in the reach and effectiveness of the institution.
A welcome observation he made at the signing ceremony of the Memorandum of Intent (MoI) between ILO-IPEC and PPAF, to combat child labour through allowing child workers and their families access to micro credit opportunities.
Also notable, in this regard, is the fact that the World Bank has allocated 238 million dollars to help continue PPAF's running projects.
Evidently, an imaginative approach, which can be seen as based on objective comprehension of the grinding poverty where it hurts the most, to its elimination from a businesslike strategy, could not have come except from the PPAF itself.
For unlike the government and non-government institutions and agencies handling this challenging task, the Fund happens to be an entity comprising, besides high government officials, professionals, business leaders and NGOs working with a missionary zeal for purposeful social development.
Needless to point out, this distinguishing feature of its very set-up has raised it head and shoulders above all the others working in the field of poverty alleviation.
In its widely understood meaning, poverty stands for insufficiency of resources on which to live. In a precise sense, it describes the state of being without enough money or resources to live at a standard considered normal in a given society. It also denotes varying states of need, from lack of material comfort to near-starvation or an acute state into which those affected are believed to have been denied the material others enjoy.
In political or sociological parlance, poverty suggests a lack of money or resources sufficient to sustain a basic standard of living, thereby leaving those affected utterly disadvantaged.
From whichever angle one may look at poverty, the fact remains that the plight of poor is apt to arouse feelings of pain and pity for them, spurring one into action so as to provide them with the resources they need, in cash and kind, as the easiest means to ending their misery.
In the beginning, this natural urge among motivated men prompted them to alms-giving, later providing impetus to growth of charitable institutions, often with a definite purpose, which were further strengthened by variously motivated good-doers engaging themselves in efforts on collective basis also.
This, of course, has reference to pursuits aimed at redeeming the plight of the poor, focusing education and healthcare, besides other areas plagued by social and economic deprivation.
It will, however, be noted that notwithstanding tremendous economic development in Pakistan and other developing countries, the gap between the rich and the poor has continued to widen during recent decades, more so amid mounting threats of population explosion.
As such, with more and more people sent down the poverty line year after year, the attention of the world has come to be especially focused on the urgency of poverty reduction and in a manner conducive to its elimination from a diversified approach.
In so far as the situation in Pakistan is concerned, the government's efforts have been generously supported by the multilateral financial institutions and other donors, thereby extending the scope of poverty alleviation effort to its logical end, that is, its eradication forever. And to this unfailing approach PPAF can be seen as completely devoted.
For instead of pumping money to mitigate suffering of the poor in one or the other area of concern, it aims at so contributing funds as to inspire its recipients with the urge to plough the resources available in efforts to generate more money, basically from a businesslike approach.
It will also be noted that somewhat similar was the purpose of some other pro-poor financing schemes with populist refrain, but generally ending up in creation of more problems instead of solving them.
For neither they were planned nor handled by men well versed in business. More to it, they were not directed at those among the resource-less with a flair of business either.
As against that, thanks to the businesslike approach PPAF has adopted, it has continued producing encouraging results through its sound planning and rigorous implementation.
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