On the federal government’s direction, the Punjab government has finalized an action plan for implementing a comprehensive programme of population welfare in the province. This was stated during a briefing to a meeting jointly chaired by Provincial Population Welfare Minister Col (r) Hashim Dogar and Chief Secretary Punjab Yousaf Naseem Khokhar here on Monday. Secretary Population Welfare briefed the meeting on performance and structure of the department, ongoing and upcoming projects. Addressing the meeting, the Provincial Minister said that healthy mother and child lay foundation of a healthy society. He mentioned that the government is fully aware of the problem of rapid population growth and has allocated more funds for population welfare in the budget this year. He directed that coordination with health department be enhanced regarding implementation of programmes of mother and child healthcare.
The Chief Secretary said that concrete steps are needed to control the growing population. “If attention is not paid to this serious issue, it would be difficult to handle the problems arising out of it in the years to come,” he added. He mentioned that there is a need to work on warfooting to control rapidly growing population for improving living standard of people. He stated that help of Ulema may be sought to raise awareness among people about this issue as they can play an important role in this regard. He directed that information about thalassemia and genetic disorders especially be also incorporated in the counselling programmes. He maintained that improvement in governance and public service delivery is a priority of the government. He directed the Secretary Population Welfare to utilize information technology for capacity building of the department, saying that use of IT has helped institutes improve their performance. The meeting was also attended by officers of Population Welfare Department.