Promises galore, performance in short supply
Over the last seven months no serious move has been made to implement the promises made before the elections, like providing 10 million jobs and 5 million houses to the underprivileged. The Prime Minister has meanwhile announced an ambitious poverty alleviation package under the rubric of ‘Ehsas’ or compassion reforms. The programme is avowedly aimed at providing financial support and social welfare to the vulnerable sections of society that include orphans, widows, the disabled, the jobless and those living below the poverty line.
Hundreds of NGO workers have been supplied tablet computers, and are in the field to collect data from households and post it directly to the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) server which is to store and analyse the information supplied by the field workers. An IT enthusiast as he is, Prime Minister Imran Khan feels confident with feeding information into the central computer. He must not however forget that the quality of output will depend on the quality of input. How far the data gathered by underpaid field workers is really accurate remains to be seen. There are already reports of some serious problems being faced by the BISP server while receiving data directly from the field. To start with, this has delayed the pace of the data collection.
Mr Khan has spoken about legislation regarding the programme and bringing a constitutional amendment that makes provision of food, shelter, clothing, education and health care to population an enforceable fundamental right. What makes the claim doubtful is the PTI’s abysmal record in legislation along with its failure to create bridges with the opposition without which no constitutional amendment can be passed.
Funds are already available for poverty alleviation with the BISP, the Central Zakat Fund, the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) and its several international partners, the World Bank and the DFID being the foremost. There is a need on the part of the PM to do more out of the box thinking beyond providing goats and chickens for poverty reduction.
Above all else, there is a need to start implementing the already announced policies. People vote for parties on the basis of promises; they pass judgment on the basis of performance. This is where the PTI government has little to show.
