Pakistan’s economic problems are red-hot but its growing population has become the biggest problem. On the one hand health and education facilities are lacking for more than 25 million people on the other hand due to the housing societies built on agricultural lands there is a shortage of food and now the country is also ordering vegetables from countries like Turkey, India, Iran and Afghanistan.
Recently an emergency policy has been proposed to prevent population growth in Pakistan. A report has been released in collaboration with the UN Population Fund and PID in which an emergency policy has been proposed to prevent population growth in Pakistan.
In a recent Report It has been said that a large scale program should be started in the country for low birth rate.
Reduction in child births should be encouraged and family planning services should be provided to prevent population growth. The report recommends that family planning services should be provided to reduce child births and intervals while sexual and reproductive health should be provided. Actions should be taken to improve the livelihood facilities.
The report states that no trend of decrease in birth of children has been seen in any province. The report recommends that health and education budget should be increased measures to create opportunities for useful jobs.
There is a need to control the growing population in the country which requires further improvement of the family planning program which is not being implemented across the country. It should be remembered that the rapid increase in population has caused the greatest shortage of food while the second place is the lack of jobs, which is having a very bad effect on both the economy and society of the country.
Therefore it is necessary to take practical measures to save agricultural lands from destruction at the government level. If have a look at the circumstances there are also court decisions in this regard in which it is clear that agricultural lands shall not be used for commercial purposes. Despite of that the agricultural lands in the villages adjacent to most of the cities of the country, including the provincial capital Peshawar have been converted into housing societies.
In which many big capitalists have been found involved and no one can put their hands on them. This is the reason that every year the agricultural land is shrinking and the population is expanding uncontrollably, which is causing many socio-economic problems.
In that regard the first step that the government and the citizens have to take together is to control the growing population.
If the rate of population per family in the country is estimated, it is known that the number of people per family is between eight or ten. Which is sixty percent more than the developed world. If it is halved then this rate becomes six to five people per family. If the cities and villages are compared in the country, the population is growing very rapidly in the villages.
The main reason being that there is a lack of awareness and education. Until a special program is created for these villages that population will continue to grow at the same pace.
Therefore it is the responsibility of the Department of Population and senior government officials to create awareness in the society to ensure the implementation of family planning to create small pilot projects at the union council level.
For that purpose a regular mapping of densely populated districts in the country should be done so that the government agencies can understand which districts require some kind of planning and manpower.
On the other hand there is no active management system in the Department of Population Welfare, which can be used to assess how the staff are performing their duties. Action has to be ensured so that any policy issued by the government can be properly implemented.
