PRIME Minister Shehbaz Sharif, on Thursday, emphasized the need for immediate national policy to check the country’s rapidly growing population.
Chairing a high level meeting to review the challenges posed by Pakistan’s rising population and deliberate on effective strategies to manage it, he called for comprehensive planning to ensure our growing population, especially the youth, becomes a productive part of the economy.
Pakistan has one of the highest population growth rates in the world presenting serious challenges to policy-makers in planning for accelerated economic development as resources are not enough for the purpose. According to a World Bank report, Pakistan is home to a vast population of over 251 million and in 2023, the population growth rate was reported to have reached around 2.55 per cent. However, almost forty-five per cent of Pakistan’s population lives below the poverty line and the country is facing wide-ranging consequences of the demographic challenge, including over 25m children currently being out of school and overcrowding at government hospitals. It is time to ponder over the reasons and factors behind our miserable performance in checking the population growth despite the announcement of a number of policies for the purpose during the last seven decades. With the passage of time and proliferation of social media, there is growing awareness among people of Pakistan about implications of the issue for family life and the national economy but still the level of awareness is wanting. There is definitely a need to launch a comprehensive media campaign for the purpose besides making serious attempts to enlist support of opinion-makers including religious leaders and teachers as they can contribute a lot in moulding opinion on the subject. There is also apparently a lack of coordination between the Centre and the provinces besides the issue of availability of inadequate resources to launch and implement a multi-directional strategy for the purpose. It would also be in the fitness of things if elected representatives down from the councilor to MPAs and MNAs/Senators are assigned the responsibility to lead campaigns aimed at checking population growth.
