POVERTY: Poverty and Terrorism

Charles Mudede Jun 13, 2011
We are always talking about the God-crazy Islamic terrorists of Pakistan. We are quick to point to religion as the source of the chaos. We only see extreme Islam and not the extreme poverty of Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD: The Government of Pakistan is shying away from disclosing figures on poverty. The government has plenty of reasons to do just that.
On 25 March 2008, the day Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani was taking oath of office, there were an estimated 47.1 million Pakistanis living in extreme poverty. Over the past three years an average of 25,000 Pakistanis per day - every single day of the past three years - have been driven into extreme poverty. The total now stands at an estimated 72.9 million under the poverty line, meaning that three years of the PPP-led government has shoved an additional 25.7 million into abject poverty.
Living below poverty line means making dreadful choices-a choice between feeding your daughter and buying medicine for your ailing mother. Living below poverty means uncertainty-uncertainty of where your next meal would come from.
We now have 72.9 million Pakistanis, 41.2 percent of the total, who are ending up spending up to 70 percent of their entire budget on food.

The violence in Pakistan is not unrelated to this poverty. Therefore, the solution to the violence is not more drones or more military aid. You get my point.
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/06/13/poverty-and-terrorism

POVERTY: PAKISTAN: Selling children to pay off a debt

LAHORE, 6 June 2011 (IRIN) -

 Photo: Kamila Hyat/IRIN
Feeding children has become harder for impoverished families, some of whom can no longer afford to provide a decent meal for them

Muhammad Ahsan gave his son away to his employer, a brick-kiln owner, after failing to pay back money he had earlier borrowed, but feels embarrassed that the boy has ended up working as a domestic helper in the latter’s home in Lahore.
“I owed him Rs.100,000 [US$1,176] I had borrowed and couldn’t afford to pay back,” Ahsan said. “He agreed to write off the amount if I `gave’ him my 10-year-old son, Sajjad, to work in his house as a domestic worker, washing dishes and cleaning floors.
“I am ashamed because I have in fact `sold’ my son, and ended his schooling to do so. But perhaps I can now afford to educate my two younger sons.”
His story is not unique. Despite laws that forbid it bonded debt labour is common in Pakistan. The US government, in a 2009 report describes Pakistan as a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and sexual exploitation.
Pakistan's largest human trafficking problem, according to the report, is that of bonded labour. Concentrated in Sindh and Punjab provinces, it is particularly common in brick kilns, carpet-making, agriculture, fishing, mining, leather tanning, and production of glass bangles. Estimates of victims of bonded labour vary widely, but together with those in forced marriages and women who are traded between tribal groups to settle disputes or as payment, are likely to exceed one million, it said.
The Karachi-based NGO the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, in a 2003 study, found that over half a million people were working at brick kilns as bonded labourers. More recent data is hard to come by.
The Pakistani National Coalition Against Bonded Labour, which is made up of a group of local NGOs, describes the practice as “one of the least known forms of slavery today but responsible for enslaving millions of people around the world”.
Apart from paying debts, parents also sell, or attempt to sell, children for other reasons.
In the southern Punjab town of Vehari, Ghazala Bibi, once stood at a city square for over seven hours, seeking “buyers” for her three children, Mahnoor, aged nine, Abdullah, seven, and Masooma, four. “My husband is a drug addict and I can no longer manage to feed my children,” Ghazala, a domestic worker, said.
She said that by selling them, she hoped they would gain a better life.
In another case reported in November 2010, four children in Vehari put up a banner offering themselves for sale to pay for a kidney transplant required by their mother, Aqsa Parveen, 35. The provincial government of the Punjab intervened and arranged to bear the costs of the surgery.
“I believe some people stage `mock’ sales, simply to obtain charity. But even in such cases the people are generally desperate and believe they have no choice,” Sumera Jabeen, a community health worker, told IRIN. She also said more people were sending children out to beg for food.

More pushed into poverty
In a report released in April, the Asian Development Bank noted that a food price hike of over 10 percent in the first few months of 2011 had pushed another 6.94 million Pakistanis into poverty. It noted that the price of wheat had risen by 10 percent this year and rice by 13.1 percent.
“We can no longer manage to offer our five children even a single decent meal. Prices are too high, I was recently laid off from my factory and now do only odd jobs, earning around Rs. 6,000 [US$70] a month. Almost the entire amount goes on buying food,” Fareed Ahmed, a textile factory worker, told IRIN.
There have also been reports of parents attempting to sell children - in one case from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan Province, simply for a bag of wheat flour.
“There is no doubt at all economic conditions are getting tougher for people. Prices are indeed rising by the day and people struggle to manage. But persons who stand by the roadside, trying to sell children, are essentially staging a drama-seeking media attention and hoping someone will give them money,” Anwar Kazmi, a spokesman for the charitable Edhi Foundation, told IRIN from Karachi.
A member of the district administration in Vehari who asked not to be named, agreed. “The problem is that politicians rush to give money to these people and gain publicity, which is why people stage these stunts - but this is no solution. What we need is a strategy to create a social safety net for the destitute, generate employment and also to control inflation,” he said.
According to the National Coalition Against Bonded Labour, those affected essentially forfeit their right to employment, to move freely, and to sell his or her labour at market value. These actions violate internationally recognized human rights.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92904

POVERTY: Pakistan: Economic Survey to miss official poverty figures

June 02, 2011

ISLAMABAD: The Economic Survey 2010-11, to be launched by Minister for Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh today (Thursday), will not possess any official figures of people living below the poverty line in Pakistan as the PPP-led regime has been unable to complete a poverty survey in its over three years rule, The News has learnt. Having no official poverty figures in the country, the Planning Commission’s Centre for Poverty Reduction and Social Policy Development’s National Project Manager Yasin Junjua has resigned from his post citing personal reasons as the sole cause for leaving this organisation at this crucial juncture. “Yes, my resignation has been accepted by the competent authority,” Yasin Junjua confirmed while talking to The News here on Wednesday.
However, official sources in the Ministry of Finance confirmed to The News that the Planning Commission in consultation with relevant authorities sent a detailed analysis on poverty trends to be incorporated in the Economic Survey for 2010-11 but there was no official poverty figure because there was no survey done. Thus, the exact figures could not be unveiled in the upcoming Economic Survey.
However, referring to UNDP’s multidimensional indicators of poverty for Pakistan by CPRSPD, it stated that in terms of deprivation of different indicators around 52 percent fell below the poverty line. The CPRSPD also dwelt upon assessments on poverty done by the Panel of Economist and Task Force on Food Security in its working paper. But it is fact that there has been no official poverty figure in Pakistan since 2005-06 when the Musharraf regime had calculated that 23.9 percent of the population was living below the poverty line.
Although, the poverty survey was done in financial year 2007-08 on the basis of which the poverty was assessed sliding down from 23 percent to 17.2 percent which was also validated and released by the World Bank but the PPP led regime refused to endorse it on the ground that these results were contrary to the ground realities.
The poverty survey called Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement (PSLM) portion of Household Income Expenditure Survey (HIES) was due in the last financial year 2009-10 to collect data from 77,000 households from all four provinces but the government did not provide funds to the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS).
During the ongoing financial year 2010-11, the HIES portion of PSLM was underway and at one stage it faced a blow when the government stopped its funding for the second half but the strong worded communication sent by the FBS to the Planning Commission paved the way for releasing of funds so the survey exercise continued without any interruption.
“We expect that the data of ongoing survey of PSLM will be forwarded to the Planning Commission by September 2011 after which the authorities would be able to come up with latest poverty figures,” a senior official of FBS told The News.
The sources said that the Planning Commission was working on different proposals to bring changes in methodology for calculating poverty as in Pakistan the Consumer Price Index (CPI) based inflation was used to come up. Under the much touted Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), the poverty scorecard survey all over the country was underway but the economic experts did not consider this ongoing survey as alternate to HIES portion of PSLM because the survey done by FBS provided comparable data of households to analyse real time changes occurred in level of poverty in households over certain period of time.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=6427&Cat=13&dt=6/2/2011