Due to bureaucratic negligence, the Population Welfare Ministry could spend so far only Rs 693 million, out of Rs 2322.727 million under PSDP for 2006-07. Sources told Business Recorder on Wednesday that attached departments have been asked to give reasons for low utilisation of development funds.
They said that the Ministry had launched a number of programmes for provision of reproductive health services through a network of 2,363 family welfare centres, mobile service units, reproductive health centres and provincial health department outlets including basic health units, dispensaries, rural health centres, and tehsil and district hospitals.
They said that the country's population would double in the next 34 years which would put unbearable burden on educational and health facilities, increasing unemployment rate, land fragmentation, overcrowding, katchi abadis, poverty, crime and environmental degradation.
The Ministry is focusing on different aspects of reproductive health and maternal and neonatal health programmes, including policy formulation, program strategies and interventions, family planning technologies as well as the role of the civil society, including enlisting the support of opinion leaders especially religious and community leaders, they added.
Sources said that lack of integrated management of reproductive health services at all levels, minimum involvement of health sector in the delivery of family planning services, lack of strong referral system to link different tiers of health, from primary to secondary and higher level, resulting in delaying or depriving clients from receiving required health services.
Insensitivity of health system to the needs of the poor and marginalised sections of the society and inadequate public, private and NGOs partnership, limited capacity and lack of skilled manpower, little involvement or traditional health workers in the delivery of family planning services are the obstacle in family population welfare programmes, they added.