Federal Minister for Population Welfare Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan on Saturday said that delegations of Ulema will be sent to different Muslim countries to study their models of population control and the most coherent model to Islamic norms the government will adopt.
Addressing a press conference at a local hotel, she said that her ministry intends to "politicise" the population control policy so that this issue could become part of the political parties' manifestos. She pointed out that the government is going to shortly organise a conference on population control with the help of Ulema to sort out a way to establish a consensus amongst the people on this issue.
She said that Ulema will likely be sent to Malaysia, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc. She added that there are many Muslim countries where issue of increasing population has successfully been controlled and such a successful role model government intends to adopt.
Conference on population control, she hoped, will be the source of public mobilisation, which the government will spread to the tehsil level. She said that the modes of population control in Pakistan are badly needed to be patronised with a tinge of Islamic teachings and norms to get acceptability from all religious circles.
To a question, Dr Firdous said that unfortunately in the past funds for this purpose could not be properly utilised for various reasons. However, her government is going to purposely use allocated funds and her visit to Karachi is the part of the wider population control plan.
Federal Minister observed that there is a constant gap in the thoughts of policy makers and policy executors, which has brought about a permanent collapse of the population welfare projects in the country. She said that the funds allocated for the population welfare were not used for this purpose and funds transfer to other development projects should stop now.