Prime Minister, Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, on Tuesday, stressed that maintaining a balance between population and available resources was essential for sustainable development, saying that rapid population growth was placing increasing pressure on national resources and posing a major challenge to the country’s progress.
Chairing a high-level meeting on population welfare, the prime minister said that population planning must be aligned with the national development, economic stability and the improvement of human resources, PM Office Media Wing said in a press release.
He directed the authorities to convene the inaugural meeting of the National Population Council at the earliest and asked that its organizational structure be finalized without delay to facilitate effective policymaking on population issues.
The meeting was attended by Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Forces, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, Defence Minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Planning Minister, Ahsan Iqbal, Minister for Finance and Revenue, Muhammad Aurangzeb, Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Attaullah Tarar, Minister of State for Finance and Railways, Bilal Azhar Kayani and senior officials.
The prime minister announced that he would personally chair the National Population Council, which would include the chief ministers of all four provinces, the Prime Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, the Chief Minister of Gilgit-Baltistan, and other key stakeholders.
During the meeting, participants were briefed on the country’s rising population and measures aimed at its control and welfare.
The briefing highlighted plans to link social protection programmes with the family planning initiatives, while emphasizing that women’s education and economic empowerment would form a key component of the national population control strategy.
The meeting was also informed that a nationwide public awareness campaign would be launched to promote balanced population growth and family planning.
It was apprised that successful population management programmes were in place in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Iran.
According to the briefing, the National Population Council, in collaboration with provincial governments, would help implement an effective nationwide population welfare campaign. It was further informed that the Council’s Secretariat would be established in the Ministry of Planning.