NWFP Chief Secretary Sahibzada Riaz Noor while appreciating the financial and technical support extended by Unicef to the province in the areas of mother and child care, polio eradication, provision of clean drinking water to the population, held out an assurance to provide security to the polio teams.
He also stressed the need for social mobilisation to make the province polio-free, by engaging all the stakeholders ie, Ulema, opinion leaders, and elected representatives of the local government. The assurance to this effect was given during a meeting presided over by Chief Secretary at Peshawar on Tuesday.
Besides Unicef Country representative Martin Magwanja and Officer In-charge Dr Abdul Jamil, the meeting was also attended by ACS Ghulam Dastagir, Administrative Secretaries of the departments of Law, Health, local government and Rural Development, Public Health Engineering and other concerned officers.
The chief secretary stressed the need for further strengthening of the government Unicef cooperation. He also urged upon the Unicef authorities to extend their cooperation to the province in order to ensure better delivery of social services to the population, particularly the backward areas.
He also directed that female teachers should be engaged in polio campaign to ensure vaccination of every child. Unicef representatives were appreciative of NWFP government's education and health sector reforms particularly in the areas of mother and child care and girls education and hinted to continue their fullest cooperation.
Additional chief secretary told the meeting that the NWFP government and Unicef's priorities, viz-a-viz mother and child health care, provision of clean drinking water and female education, were very much compatible and we would achieve the targets with collective and co-ordinated efforts.
Earlier, administrative secretaries briefed the Unicef team about the progress so far achieved in the projects launched in various sectors in collaboration with Unicef.