Renowned economist Dr Kaiser Bengali on Saturday said that growing beggary in the country was the direct result of flawed economic policies of present regime that had failed to boost production, generate new jobs and alleviate poverty.
Talking to PPI here, he said increase in hordes of beggars as well as rise in number of drug addiction cases and crimes were the result of government policy to make Gross Domestic Product (GDP) profit-oriented basis instead of making it wages-generating one.
Dr Bengali said that government's assertion of high GDP growth rate were deceptive in terms of poverty elimination because the growth rate was only profit oriented ie rich were getting richer. He said that due to these flawed policies poverty was aggravating and benefits of any economic growth not reaching to poor masses.
"GDP is calculated taking into account both gross national profit growth and gross national wages growth, at present there is a major profit oriented growth in banking and automobile assembling/ manufacturing sectors rather than growth in terms of wage increase or job creations," he said.
He said that he has supervised a poverty evaluation survey that showed that 10% rich families in the country have share of 34% in national income while 10% of the poor families has share of 0.3% in national income, which he said clearly indicated real directions of GDP growth and unjust distribution of wealth.
"Even when the government was claiming highest GDP growth rate of up to 6 to 9% during the last few years, banking sector had growth rate of up to 33% and this sector do not cater needs of majority of population from lower middle and lower income classes," Dr Bengali said.
He said that another anthropological study of Karachi has revealed that majority of female beggars, drug addicts, prostitutes and jailed prisoners got engaged in such illegal acts just to feed their children, which was the basic sign of poverty. "Our team have witnessed lower middle class non-begging females left-out food that earlier used to be distributed among beggars only," he said.
Beggars from poverty struck areas of Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan usually pay visit to urban centres like Karachi in Ramazan and stay there till first week of Eid during which they beg for food, cash and clothing.
In Karachi, hordes of such beggars can bee seen around mosques, markets, traffic signals and in residential areas, besides they have established make-shift colonies near rail tracks and in suburbs.
There are reports of professional beggary too, but the fact of increasing poverty can not be denied, he said adding rampant social injustice in our society is the major factor behind growing beggary, crimes, drug addiction and other desperate measures taken by affected and poverty hit individuals and groups.