Efforts on to resolve street kids issues: Zobaida

The Minister for Social Welfare and Special Education, Zobaida Jalal, has stated that the government is alive to the problems of the street children, runways, domestic child workers and children suffering from sexual abuse and trafficking.
She said that steps have been taken to understand the problems better through a series of studies, however, the real test is to ensure effective implementation of the sectoral plans. The minister was addressing 'Consultation on Developing Mechanism for Implementation of National Plan for Action for Children' here on Tuesday.
Another serious issue for the government, she said, is the care of children without family support and National Plan of Action (NPA) covers main areas of exploitation, while envisaging protecting children from all conflicting and exploitative situations like trafficking and abduction.
Improving the plight of millions of children who live under difficult circumstances, ensuring registration of every child at birth, especially development of law enforcement agencies is essential part of NPA to end crimes against children, the minister said.
Zobaida Jalal said the current statistics regarding child development, survival and protection indicate that net enrolment at the primary level is 52 percent, retention rate for 2004-05 is noted as 61 percent and significant gender gaps at all levels especially in the rural areas persist.
Moreover, NPA envisions working for expansion and improvement, enhancement of net primary school enrolment rates among children with a view to ensuring the compulsory universal primary education and eliminating all kinds of gender disparities at primary and secondary levels of education to ensure gender equality, the minister said.
Malnutrition is one of the major contributors to childhood mortality and many deaths could be prevented if mothers and children are properly fed and provided with proper nutritional care, said Zobaida Jalal.
Over 35 percent of children below five years are short for their age, over 10 percent are underweight for their height and over one-half are anaemic and to handle the issue a mega project titled 'Tawana Pakistan: School Nutrition Package for Girls" was approved for 29 poverty-stricken districts and 5,300 targeted schools, 4,731 schools have been covered, whereas 4,032 schools were under feeding and out of targeted girls, 348,454 girls are the beneficiaries, she said.
Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and under-five mortality rate among children is 74 and 98 per 1000 live births, respectively. Similarly, the current maternal mortality rate is 300-400 per 100,000 live births and the NPA envisions to reducing IMR and under-five mortality rate 30 and 42 per 1000 live Zobaida Jalal said the National Commission for Child Welfare and Development has established a full-fledged cell within the ministry to monitor the implementation of NPA.
Speaking at another ceremony of 'The Fund for the People with Disability and the World Bank South Asia Disability Team', the minister said the government has increased the budgetary allocations to the education for special children. Moreover, disabled children must also be given admission to the same schools where normal children are studying, she added.
Zobaida Jalal distributed certificates among prominent NGOs working on special children issues and the World Bank also launched the book 'Just Like the Other Kids' which was developed by the group of young people from Islamabad and Azad Jammu and Kashmir to teach others that a disabled is like other normal person, she said.
World Bank Representative Kamal Hayat said $1 million fund was given to the Social Welfare Ministry for 14 NGOs working on special children that becomes about Rs 6 billion and OGDCL has given about Rs 0.6 million to be awarded to these NGOs.