Articles and letters may be edited for the purposes of clarity and space. They are published in good faith with a view to enlightening all the stakeholders. However, the contents of these writings may not necessarily match the views of the newspaper.
Poverty rate to soar due to Covid-19
At least 10 million more Pakistanis will drop below the poverty line due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 Pandemic, the government’s new economic rating says. Nearly one in four Pakistanis are currently too poor to meet basic needs, but that number is expected to rise to around 30pc of the world’s sixth-largest country. In addition, about one in four Pakistanis is currently very poor to meet basic needs, but that number is expected to rise to around 30pc of the world’s most populous country.
The outbreak of Covid-19 is expected to have a negative impact on Pakistan’s economy, and the number of people living below the poverty line may increase from the current 50 million to 60 million people. The government’s annual Economic Survey for 2019-2020 also warned that the economy would be the first time in 68 years. Pakistan is already experiencing an economic crisis before the outbreak of the pandemic and the country has been hit by the economic shutdown. A drop in remittances from overseas Pakistanis is expected to add to the financial crisis. Furthermore, the economic survey estimated the number of jobs lost to coronavirus will vary from 1.4m in the case of few lockdown restrictions to 18.5 million if the country’s businesses are widely shuttered.
SARFRAZ SOOMRO
Shikarpur
Deprived women
With the passage of time Pakistani society has became lethal to women, she has been trapped in the web of dependency and subordination due to their low social, economic and political status in the society. The majority women suffer from all forms of discrimination whether it relates to inheritance, participation in government functionaries, marrying at their own choice or taking decision about their future.
The liberty of women is curtailed. This curtailment often impacts families, communities, intergenerational harm. Pakistani women have been deprived of their fundamental rights which are recognized in many international instruments such as articles, 4,9,12 of Universal declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), articles 8,9,11,12 of International covenant of civil and political rights (ICCPR) and article 2,3 of Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW).
There is need of women’s participation in the state structure and decision-making bodies that could introduce such structural changes and their inclusion in governance structure is critical to bring about substantial changes. Therefore, being signatory to all these conventions Pakistan shouldn’t act against the aforementioned conventions and conduct a survey on an urgent basis to determine the need of legal and institutional framework to deal with the issue of their deprivation and ensure a peaceful environment for this segment of the society.
SANAULLAH KALWAR
Kashmore, Sindh
Vehicle
token tax
With much fanfare, the Excise and Taxation Department has been advertising a computer application enabling the citizens to pay their token tax online instead of visiting the Excise and Taxation offices. It’s a step in the right direction, especially during the Corona pandemic but things on ground are much different. You install the App and when you locate your vehicle’s particulars, it mentions the name of the former owner from whom you bought the vehicle, let’s say, a decade ago.
The vehicle had been transferred in your name and you had duly paid its tokens every year for the last ten years. This is an egregious oversight at the part of the Excise and Taxation Department. To avail rebate by paying the token tax within July, the excise and taxation department needs to wake up to address public predicament.
IFTEKHAR A KHAN
Lahore
Post COVID 19 infection
It is known that the post-COVID-19 disease has broken out in the shape of nascent disease named ‘’Kawasaki’’ in Pakistan. The Kawasaki disease mostly affects children aged five years or younger. The symptoms of that disease are fever, rash, swollen neck glands, swollen hands and feet and red eyes.Four cases of Kawasaki disease have been reported in Children Hospital Lahore. It is suggested to parents to look after their children carefully and keep them neat and clean and provide a healthy diet to keep their children safe and healthy. The government also needs to take effective measures to curb this disease as to eliminate and eradicate this at a very nascent stage, not to ease that as in case of COVID 19.
WAQAR BADAR KANDHRO
Larkana
Copy paste culture
Poverty reduction is linked to innovation and R&D. But innovation only increases when food production increases. Therefore it is good news that the government has taken an initiative by introducing Agriculture Package to improve farm production. But unfortunately the Government is using the same old formula of subsidizing fertilizer, reducing bank mark-ups, subsidizing pesticide and tractors. This formula has been used many times and it only benefits the banks and industries while farm production doesn’t improve.
Local small farmers face difficulty on getting Bank loans because banks have no process of finding financial worth of a farm. Rather than giving banks one year advance interests on farmer loans, banks should be asked to implement systems that can calculate farm worth and provide basis for loans to farmers. This would also help insurance companies to provide insurance to farmers.
Similarly farmers need drip and sprinkler irrigation systems that have high initial cost and require some training. The Government should ask banks to partner with private companies to provide these new irrigation systems to local farms on subsidized loans. In many areas of Pakistan, farmers do not use fertilizer. Such farm production can be classified as “Organic” and fetches higher price in international market.
There are so many new ways the Government can improve agriculture sector in Pakistan, but using the same incentives each year just highlights the copy-paste no-leadership culture of the agriculture promotion institutes of Pakistan that beg for changes at the helms of these institutions to help improve agriculture in Pakistan.
SHAHRYAR KHAN BASEER
Peshawar