Importance of political accountability stressed

LAHORE

PARTICIPANTS in a workshop on Saturday underscored the importance of instituting political accountability along with the enhanced capacity building, as two most important recurrent features that had emanated during the research carried out by the World Bank on the Human Opportunity Index across several countries.

The workshop “Human Opportunity and Decentralisation of Social Services in Pakistan” was jointly organised by the World Bank and Institute of Public Policy of the Beaconhouse National University (BNU) at a local hotel.

The workshop brought to the surface the findings on Pakistan’s progress in coverage and equitable access to the basic health and education opportunities both at provincial and local levels by developing the Human Opportunity Index (HOI).

Country Director World Bank Rachid Benmessaoud, BNU Vice-Chancellor Sartaj Aziz, Secretary Planning & Development Board Punjab Ali Tahir, Dean BNU Dr Hafiz A Pasha, Former Advisor to CM Sindh Dr Kaiser Bengali and others also spoke.

The discussion took place in the backdrop of recent World Bank report on HOI in 20 countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The report looks into equality of opportunities for children that can improve the ‘likelihood of a child to maximise his/her human potential’; it delineate the fact that in the period between 1998/99 and 2007/08, the level of HOI for education is still low in Pakistan relative to all Latin American countries and many African countries.

Ali Tahir said the department had made HOI report on Punjab which was expected to be launched in the second half of this year.

Dr Kaiser Bengali said without political will no change was possible and decentralisation should be according to the ground realities. He said decentralisation of Pervez Musharraf fractured the system.

Dr Hafiz Pasha and Director Research Lahore School of Economics Naved Hamid were of the view that it was good that the World Bank was now focusing on inequality besides working on the growth strategy. They also suggested that the bank should involve local researchers and they should be given a chance to work with international experts.

In the technical session-I, Jean-Paul Faguet from London School of Economics presented a paper “Global decentralisation experiences: impacts, lessons and preconditions for a successful decentralisation in the health and education sectors”. Pablo Gottret from the World Bank was moderator of the session while panelists included Dr Asad Sayeed, Director Collective for Social Science Research and Dr Kaiser Bengali.

In the technical session-II, John Newman from the World Bank presented paper “Equality of Opportunity in Pakistan and its Provinces” while Dhushyanth Raju of World Bank, SASED presented paper titled “District Differences in Health & Education in Pakistan”. This session was moderated by Jose Lopez Calix of the World Bank while the speakers included Dr Hafiz A Pasha and Naved Hamid.