The Population Welfare Ministry has sent a summary to the Prime Minister for approval of Rs 5 million to meet lodging and travelling expenditure of delegates invited to attend the two-day 'Follow Up Ulema Conference' scheduled to be held on May 29-30.
Sources told Business Recorder that the Ulema from 21 Islamic countries have been invited to attend the conference. The main objectives of the conference are to evaluate the goals, set by previous conference held in May last year.
These include Ulema training, socio-economic development through population control, maternal/child healthcare, reproductive health, and improvement in economic conditions of rural and disadvantaged women.
Sources said that despite some success in population welfare projects, access to quality family welfare and reproductive health including fertility management is still deficient in some countries, which need to be addressed.
The ministry has focused to highlight the issues of rapid population growth in contemporary world, declining standards of maternal and child health, increasing environmental degradation, unmanaged migration and massive urbanisation, which is a threat to the process of socio-economic development and the welfare of people, they said.
During the conference, the Muslim countries will be urged to formulate their population control policies in accordance with the country specific needs and work for integration of the same into development plans, seeking population stabilisation, they added.
They said that the conference will also lay emphasis on the relevance of Islamic guidance to population related issues that aim towards the betterment of human life, social uplift and elimination of poverty in Muslim countries and communities.
They said that Ulema play an important role in educating people on the population-related issues hence they must mobilise their communities for adoption of family welfare norms to improve maternal and child health and develop healthy Islamic Ummah.
Whereas, reports of the standing committee on population welfare do not show much improvement as despite hard efforts and huge budgetary allocation no significant results can be seen at grassroots level.