Gender inequality major reason behind hindered human development

Islamabad : Dr Bina Pradhan from Nepal has said that gender inequality is one of the major causes of hindered human development index in South Asia.

Dr Bina was speaking at a session during the last day of 21st Sustainable Development Conference organised here by SDPI.

Dr Bina quoted the example of Nepal where women are generating 6% higher revenues than men in small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). She proposed a regional exchange and observation programme should be launched in South Asia.

Dr Kaiser Bengali, Chairman, Sindh Education Foundation, said that Federal Government was the looser of the 7th NFC Award. He said that richest 10% of the population pays 10% of income tax while poorest 10% of the population pays 16% of income tax.

Prof Dr Jan Werner from Cologne Business School, Germany, said that there are two ways of centralisation, i.e., horizontal and vertical and Germany is adopting these ways in tackling problems related to the implementation of fiscal policies. He said that Pakistan should not do too much and start new initiatives as it doesn’t have many incentives.

Senator Mian Muhammad Ateeq Sheikh said that while making policies, we forget that we need to take on-board the real stakeholders, like in health and tobacco warning case, the tobacco producers should implement laws regarding limited use of tobacco in the country. He observed that the newly-levied sin tax caused a lot of social backlash and in Pakistan, the main hurdle is the ineffectiveness to implement policies because of the strong position tobacco industry holds because of the leverage they get by paying heavy taxes.

Saadiya Razzaq, Member of the Population Council, expressed concern concerns about the availability of illegal brands of cigarettes in and around the areas of Islamabad.

Nadeem Iqbal, CEO, Network for Consumer Rights Protection, said multi-sectoral policies should be part of the grand legislative policy and there is a need to involve all the ministries concerned to effectively implement the prohibition of tobaccos.

Nadeem Babar, the Chairperson of PM’s Task Force on Energy Reforms, said Pakistan is facing huge energy leakages due to various reasons and the government is carrying out a massive crackdown on theft and non-recovery. He further said that we expect consumers to pay for what they use but it is not the case.

Shoaib Sultan Khan, Chairperson, Rural Support Programme Network, said that social mobilisation is the key to poverty reduction since we can reach poorest of the poor through this approach.

Koshif Rijabekov from Tajikistan said that Aga Khan Rural Support Program model was adopted in Tajikistan by Mountain Societies Development Support Program to yield successful results.