- Child Rights Movement publishes report revealing government’s lack of attention to children welfare, education, health
The sum of all allocations for child-focused health, education and social welfare is 0.75 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which indicates that low priority is being given to children and related schemes, programmes and projects.
This data was revealed by the Punjab Child Rights Movement (CRM) in its report titled “Budget Analysis from Child Rights Perspective in Punjab Fiscal Years 2013-14 & 2014-15”.
A large number of representatives from media, civil society and economists attended the report launching event.
According to the report, Pakistan has allocated 0.66 per cent of GDP for child-focused education, 0.11 per cent on child-focused healthcare, and 0.04 per cent on child-focused social welfare.
On the state of education, the report reveals that in Lahore only about 11% children are out of school, while 11% schools lack basic infrastructure like toilet and drinking water facility, and in rest of the Punjab the percentage is even more high as 14% schools lack these facilities.
In 2012, the percentage of such schools were 13% which means in the past three years the condition improved by only 1 %.
The joint education declaration, which was ratified by all provinces, demands of the every province to devise strategies and action plan to educate its citizens as per the Article 25 A of the constitution.
However, even after three years in power, the Punjab government has not devised any comprehensive plan to achieve the target of 100% literacy rate.
HEALTH SECTOR AS POOR AS EDUCATION:
Meanwhile, the situation of basic healthcare for children paints an equally dismal picture. The report states that Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) in Punjab is 77 per 1000 child while MMR is 300 per 100,000 births.
The child mortality rate below 5 is also alarmingly high that is 112 per thousand while 34% children of the same age bracket are malnourished. For a population of 80-90 million and a birth rate of 4.7 %, there are only 151 hospitals, 194 dispensaries, 293 rural health centres and 2,461 Basic Health Units with a total capacity of 37,272 beds. Though since 2009-10 the budget for health sector has been doubled but in proportion to the total budget of Punjab it has decreased from 8% to 5.4%.
Punjab spends around 100 billion on health, education and social sector, however, this also includes adolescents and youth, and thus child specific budget is lessened further. This situation shows that children are not a priority for the government and in fact a bright and prosperous future can’t be fulfilled without spending on protection and prosperity of children.
“Limited budget allocation for child development reflects a lack of seriousness on the part of the government and its efforts to meet constitutional and international commitments to effectively protect and promote children rights in the country,” states the report.
Democratic Commission for Human Development Spokesperson and Executive Director Tanveer Jahan said that the government aspires for provincial autonomy but its priority is neither children nor poor.
Renowned economist Qais Aslam said that it seems that to spend on children is not government’s priority, that is why the nation is far behind in achieving MDGs and couldn’t eradicate polio completely.
In spite of civil war and dismal conditions in Syria and Algeria, not even a single polio case had been reported since last one year. He further said that provinces do not spend on important budget heads like debts or defense as it is case with federal budget.
“So this budget after 18th amendment must have been spent on social and development sectors,” he added.
He further pointed out that a large amount of budget is under spent, as a routine practice. He said that policy makers should be held accountable for such discrepancies.
