Senate panel urges govt to prioritise marginalised segments

ISLAMABAD: Members of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Marginalised Segments of Society urged the government on Monday not to waste development funds on misplaced priorities and focus on spending dedicated funds for the disabled, terrorism victims, widows, transgender people and others.

They also called upon the government not to “wilfully push people below the poverty line”.

Senator Nisar Muhammad chaired a meeting of the committee where officers of the Ministry of Planning and Development presented data on poverty incidence.

Figures presented by the Chief of Poverty Alleviation programme Zafrul Hassan depicted that areas in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan as well as some in Sindh were worst hit by poverty.

At the provincial level, poverty incidence in Azad Kashmir stands at 24.9 per cent; followed by Punjab at 31.4 per cent; Gilgit-Baltistan 43.2 per cent; Sindh 43.1 per cent; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 49.2 per cent; Balochistan 71.2 per cent and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) 73.7 per cent.

Specific areas in FATA, Balochistan and Sindh were way below the poverty line and senators asked the official concerned why the poverty was high in those areas.

“It is probably because of security-related issues. Investors stay away from such violence-prone areas … nobody wants to waste their money,” said Hassan.

The committee chairperson asked, “Poverty rate is the highest in Balochistan, what has the government done there so far?”

In reply, Secretary of the Ministry of Planning and Development Shoaib Ahmad Siddiqui said the government had set aside more development funds for such areas.

Senator Sajid Hussain Turi observed that the poverty situation was well in hand only in those areas where influential parliamentarians resided.

An officer of the Planning Commission said that they were planning to map all areas to identify all health and education facilities, besides charting living condition in areas with missing facilities.

Senator Rubina Khalid urged the ministry to first identify why poverty was on the rise in these areas.

She opined that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) would not benefit the country. “Let us not depend too much on CPEC … I do not think local industries will ever be able to compete with Chinese units,” she said.

Senator Rubina Irfan said that Chinese would bring in their own resources and use only Pakistan’s land.

Criticising the government over the gold extraction process in Saindak in Balochistan, she said that nobody knew where “our resources go and who uses them”.

Barrister Muhammad Ali Saif said that there never was any cogent effort to spend development funds in the country. “I do not think it will ever bring socio-economic change and if someone believes so then he is living in a fool’s paradise.”

He said that the CPEC was a neo-colonial style to rule a country and “nobody gives you money for your development … Chinese are actually lining their pockets from the project.”

Senator Nisar said about Rs240 billion was being spent on development projects while funding for special programmes was not being approved. “Just look at Rs120 billion [worth of] funds for the Benazir Income Support Programme … poverty-stricken areas are getting poorer,” he said.

He also questioned why the government had not yet allocated Rs5 billion for victims of terrorism, widows and marginalised segments in the country.

Nisar also said that the government had no data or classification for marginalised groups, which showed its ineptitude. “I will discuss this with the Senate’s chairperson and share details of misappropriation of development funds,” he said.

Source: The Express Tribune