Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Information Secretary Qamar Zaman Kaira on Tuesday underlined the need for public participation particularly of the civil society in assisting the government to attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Addressing the concluding session of the 'National Conference on Monitoring the Achievements of the MDGs and Weaknesses of Existing Budgetary Allocations', he said that said that participation of the public and civil society was an important factor in conceiving a productive outline for social development at national as well as provincial and district level.
Kaira said that 18th amendment did not incorporate intra provincial disharmonies rather it was based on the principle of inter provincial disharmony; hence it had become more significant for local governments in identifying gaps and suggesting productive recommendations aligned with capacity building trainings of the provincial civil servants.
He said though it was important to make more allocations for the social sector in the federal budget, but was also a fact that the government can't cut defence expenditures in the prevailing circumstance when the neighbouring country, India was increasing its defence budget every year.
He also stressed the need for re-adjustment of the MDGs with in-put form the internal as well as external sources. Karia, who is a former Minister for Information and Broadcasting, also admitted that corruption existed in the government. "I do admit that there is corruption and weakness in our government but efforts are underway to put the things on the tracks."
The National Conference that concluded on apprehensions of failure to attain MDGs in context of passage of 18th amendment, soaring defence expenditures, rampant corruption and capacity issues of provincial institutions destined to serve the public, was organised by ActionAid Pakistan and AusAid.
Nasir Memon, Executive Director Strengthening Participatory Development (SPO) said that question of MDGs was more of a political rather than administrative nature as it was a matter of decision making whether they allocate more funds for defence expenditures or prefer spending maximum of revenue collection on social development projects of health, education and livelihood.
He termed it as failure of state response rather than of the government to honour the international commitment of meeting MDGs. Rana Riaz Saeed, a representative of Global Call against Poverty (GCAP) said that a poor in Pakistan had to spend 77 percent of his/her income on health issues. He stressed upon the need to treat data separately and in segregation for each sector, district, union council and province. He was of the view that national data reflects deceptive picture of the situation at individual, local and provincial levels.
He referred to destruction of schools by fundamentalists and claimed that it had played havoc with the morale of the government and general public to struggle for attaining MDGs. Irfan Mufti from SAP-PK said that human development agenda had been dropped and the country's economy was no more oriented towards growth and progress. He said that population growth was out of control whereas the resource availability was getting scarce with each passing day. Similarly, he said that democracy is plagued with corruption and bankruptcy.