Chief Executive Officer Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) Qazi Azmat Isa has said that his organisation will continue supporting the initiatives being taken by Baidarie Sialkot for the economic and social empowerment of the poor and ultra poor living in rural, slum and semi urban areas.
PPAF will soon be taking five piloting initiatives in Pakistan to increase the potentials for employability of youth and the one for Punjab will be taken in collaboration with Baidarie Sialkot. He said that PPAF would also support Baidarie for conducting analysis of the job market, conditions of the livelihood options and exploration of job-diversification avenues. Qazi was heading the team of senior management of PPAF during a review mission in the operational areas of Baidarie Sialkot.
Addressing community gatherings at different places in the rural areas he said that PPAF is working in partnership with 106 non-governmental organisations for kindling ray of hope in the hearts and minds of the people living below the poverty and hunger lines. It is endeavouring hard to assure them that though the circumstances are grim and bleak yet a sliver lining is there and that will lead them out of the clutches of the manifestations and clutches of the poverty, provided they organise themselves and begin working to change their conditions.
We do not want to formulate our policies and take decisions during an isolated process carried forward in estrangement of the poor for whom we proclaim to work. Instead, we prefer to go directly to the people, sit with them, understand their problems and find out the solutions of the problems through deliberations and consultations with them. That is the sole reason for meeting the people living at the core line of the rural set-ups in Sialkot.
During Qazi interaction with social activists coming from the Community Organisations and youth groups, he emphasised that PPAF does not believe in models, instead it is the process of the reinforcement and strengthening of the values, which we prefer to advance. It wants to instil passion in the poor, build their knowledge and capacities and mobilise them to act for development. PPAF cares a lot for its principles of keeping the development of the under-developed areas on its top-priority, mitigation of the feelings of deprivation and transparency at every step and action.
He said that the lack of access to opportunities for employing their talents for constructive and productive purposes makes colossal additions to the frustrations of the young generations hence the potentials of the youth need to be saved on preferential basis and harnessed to yield optimum constructive outputs. Similarly the women constitute almost half of our population. The society, in no way can flourish and progress without letting its women empowered to make women an informed, aware and active process of the mainstream development.
Qazi Azmat Isa thanked Baidarie for facilitating him to come over to Sialkot and himself see the conditions in which the poor people live and face the hardships in making the both ends meet, the in-capacities they confront in making headway for their social and economic development, the way the male and female youth feel and the condition of the communities that are organising themselves to peacefully assert for their rights and make collective organised struggle for solution of the problems facing them in every day lives.
Interacting during several community meetings held in villages Korowal, Mangoobehram and Manan Chnad, Hina Noureen President Baidarie said that untiring toils of thousands of those workers in the factories, homes and in the agricultural fields in no way let them escape out of the ruthless clutches of the poverty. Fast squeezing volume of the hand stitched ball business because of diminishing competitiveness of Pakistan's products in the international markets due to ever increasing production cost, difficulties in respecting the production and shipment deadlines, increased business driven needs and trends for automation and sophistication in the industry and poor compliance of the buyers' codes of conduct etc is going to shortly make thousands of workers jobless. Surely there is no arrangement in place to bail out these voiceless victims of the economic and social repercussions of the rapid process of major cuts in the volume of the hand-stitched ball business. It is quite disturbing that so far there is no cognisance at the level of state and business sectors to apprehend this danger and there is no thought in process for taking effective measures to encounter this challenge. PPAF must take initiative to build the capacity of these workers and establish linkages so that they may have access to the income generating alternatives.
The communities in all the villages complained that the condition of the community physical infrastructure, health and education facilities in the rural area, are fast squeezing size of the job providing slots, incapability of the poor women to be self-sustained entrepreneurs, non-availability of social safety nets for ultra-poor, non-existence of system to take care of the persons with physical limitations and repeated acts of gross violations of basic human rights are the problems. It indicates that there are several pockets in the district where assumed trickle down impact of industrial growth has the least effect. People in these pockets having meagre food security are at the lowest scale of the human development and are being badly afflicted by social, economic and political poverty. The sad part in this regard is that these people are voiceless hence are unheard and un-noticed. No pragmatic and programmatic effort is in place to change their condition for the better.