BY JAVED MAHMOOD
LAHORE - The province of Balochistan seems to be largely untouched by the buoyant economic growth witnessed in Pakistan in recent years.
A number of factors are responsible for Balochistan’s economic backwardness and its inability to capitalize on Pakistan’s overall economic growth, including its physical geography and poor human development indicators.
Asian Development Bank has observed this in its project document on Balochistan Capacity Building for Devolved Social Services Technical Assistance.
According to document, Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province, accounting for nearly 45 per cent of the country’s surface area, with a thinly dispersed population of around 6.5 million.
ADB has observed that tapid improvement in human capital is essential for Balochistan if it is to tap the benefits of global, market-driven economic growth. Despite making progress in education and health indicators, these indicators nevertheless remain among the lowest in South Asia.
In addition, geographical, cultural, ethnic, historical, political, and other factors have interplayed to pose governance and institutional challenges that have major implications for the quality of social service delivery, ADB said, adding thus Balochistan needs social sector governance reforms and institutional strengthening to improve the effectiveness of both public and private social service delivery.
According to ADB, Balochistan Government is determined to pursue a robust course of economic and human development as articulated in the Balochistan Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper.
The Local Government Ordinance 2001 has created institutional opportunities for improving social service delivery through the involvement of local governments and communities; however, policy reforms, institutional strengthening, and capacity building of both district and facility managers and service providers of education, health and water supply and sanitation sectors are essential to improve devolved social services.
The proposed BDSSP has four principal policy areas, namely: (i) strengthening and clarify relationships between provincial and local governments, (ii) strengthening the relationship between local governments and social service providers, (iii) strengthening the relationship between citizens and policy makers and between citizens and service providers in order to empower the public; and (iv) enabling the private sector to engage in social service
delivery.
A TA loan of $5 million is built into the BDSSP to provide support for implementation, capacity building, and policy reforms; however, this TA loan is unlikely to become available until the second half of 2006. The first trenches actions, as well as advance actions pertaining to the proper implementation of performance grants, including measures to mitigate fiduciary risks and ensure proper financial management of devolved social services, need to be undertaken as soon as possible and before June 2006. Without such advance actions, the launch of the BDSSP is likely to encounter start-up delays.
The Asian Development Bank’s (ADB’s) Country Strategy and Program Update 2005-
2006 for Pakistan noted that the delivery of social services, which since 2001 has been a responsibility of local governments, is showing promising signs of improvement.
ADB’s support to social sectors continues through the devolved social services programs, which are designed to ensure effective and equitable distribution of resources to local governments for education, health, and water supply and sanitation (WSS).
ADB’s strategic focus on governance will continue and will be mainstreamed as a cross-cutting issue in the devolved social services programs. The 2005 program includes the Balochistan Devolved Social Services Program (BDSSP) loan and technical assistance (TA) for Balochistan Capacity Building for Devolved
Social Services. The proposed BDSSP will support policy reforms to strengthen devolved social services, expand performance grants for district governments, and support a TA loan to facilitate policy reforms.
http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/dec-2005/7/bnews5.php |
