The question whether Pakistan is a security or welfare state haunted a conference's participants: politicians, intelligentsia and civil society, on Monday while tracing progress on the decade old commitment to sustainable human development, as they agreed on one point that the country is lagging far behind Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set for 2015.
The speakers identified a plethora of issues including disoriented policies, corruption and lack of implementation of what is planned, as the major bottleneck in achieving the eight MDGs. "Depleting industry due to power crisis, deteriorating education system and hospitals with no medicines are ignored, as policymakers give priority to the purchase of F-16," was the elegy sung by Senator Mir Hasil Bizenjo, which got a unanimous pat.
The Senator noted that the MDGs should be part of political parties' manifestos and they should work for uniting the society, which he said had been fragmented on the basis of language, ethnicity, class and creed. There can be no progress at all towards the MDGs unless and until there existed differences between the federation and provinces, said Bizenjo.
"There is a segment (in bureaucracy) which still believes that provincial autonomy will result in disintegration," said Bizenjo, adding a strong federation in the past was the reason behind the disintegration of the country.
Senator Haji Adeel challenged government and humanitarian organisations' survey records showing progress in education sector to meet MDGs.
He contended that situation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Fata was rather getting worse due to prolonged war on terror. He alleged that terrorists had made it a mission to destroy schools particularly of girls. He referred to a study done in 1991, according to which 40,000 MW electricity can be produced through small hydel power projects and said they never received the money to materialise the projects.
Earlier, Zulfiqar Halepoto of Thardeep Rural Development Program (TRDP) Sindh lamented the level of corruption in the province and said localisation of MDGs was the only medium of achieving the goals. He said that the democratic government did not bother to focus on its policies as it was still pursuing the strategies introduced by former military dictator Parvez Musharraf.
Dr Sarfraz Ahmed, Director Area Study Center Peshawar University portrayed a bleak picture of KP and said 1,600 out of 2,254 industrial units were shut down.
Dr Pervez Tahir (Former Chief Economist) gave a presentation on situation in Punjab and said there was no hope at all to achieve the targets by 2015. Dr Ishaq Baloch from Balochistan urged the need of equal distribution of resources amongst the provinces. He termed government's policies for achieving the MGDs as cosmetic steps since there was no budgetary allocation for the purpose.
However, they all were disappointed over the progress made so far and warned the government of failing to meet the deadline of 2015 for the MDGs. Participants at the two-day national conference organised by ActionAid-Pakistan on 'monitoring the achievements of the MDGs and weaknesses of the existing budgetary allocation' stressed upon the need to focus on eradicating causes of social backwardness. They raised concerns on high population growth, power shortage, food insecurity, and unemployment, absence of health, education and road infrastructure.
Pakistan along with 190 nations adopted eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Adopted in 2000 by UN Member States, the MDGs provided a framework of global partnership for sustainable human development. The specific objectives were to reduce poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equity and empower women, improve health conditions and ensure environmental sustainability.