Govt committed to provide all possible facilities to most vulnerable people: Asad Umar

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Planning Development and Special Initiatives, Asad Umar Wednesday said that the government was committed to provide all possible facilities to the most vulnerable and marginalized sections of the society.

He was chairing the first sub-committee meeting of National Economic Council (NEC) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) here.

The minister Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf (PTI) government had vision of improving quality of the life of the vulnerable and weakest segments of society.

The progress report of the sub-committee, he said would be presented in the NEC meeting chaired by the PM himself.

Secretary Planning, Chief SDGs representatives from Provincial Planning and Development departments and officials from Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit Baltistan (GB) attended the meeting.

The first sub-committee of NEC on SDGs discussed the existing status of implementation, institutional arrangements and way forward by the government to align SDGs with the development framework in the country and improve coordination for SDGs monitoring and reporting system.

Chief SDGs briefed the meeting that implementation of already approved SDGs frame work by federal, provinces and area governments requires attention.

After the data gaps report 2018, the SDGs related indications were added in existing surveys to improve data availability.

The sub-committee reviewed the recommendations on SDGs and directed provincials departments to establish SDGs sections with regular staff for SDGs coordination and implementation.

Secondly they agreed on establishing technical committees/working groups of relevant stake holders in all the federal ministries.

They also directed federal ministries and provincial departments to develop workable action/ implementation plan on the key priority targets identified in national and provincial SDGs framework.

Sub-committee discussed the mechanism of data flows to MoPD&SI, SDGs reporting and role of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).

The PBS informed the committee that currently Pakistan can report against 80 indicators.

A total of 48 indicators are from surveys administrated by PBS. They said that the availability of authentic data is essential for decision making and provision of provincial indicators will help policy makers to identify the regional gaps.

Sub-committee in principle approved the decision of data reporting from surveys administrated by the PBS which will take the precedence to all other survey sources in case of multiplicity or overlap at both Federal and Provincial reporting levels.

They decided that PBS and provincial bureaus will publish SDGs progress report on annual basis based on survey and administrative data sources. Asad Umar directed them to extend data collection and reporting of relevant SDGs indicators for GB & AJK.

The SDGs dashboard and SDGs index is presented before the NEC sub-committee for real time progress monitoring and reporting of SDGs in Pakistan.

It will provide comparative analysis of SDGs progress among provinces, special areas and districts level.

The sub-committee directed to form a working group under the SDG unit / section of the Ministry of Planning with nominees from Provinces to strengthen, coordination for accelerated progress on SDGs.