KP govt seeks input from departments to ensure IDS implementation by 2018

PESHAWAR: Acting on the directives of the federal government, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has asked all departments to appoint focal persons and provide inputs so that the development strategy could be implemented by the end of 2018.
The Planning & Development Department (P&D) has already nominated Tariq Mehmood, Director, Bureau of Statistics (BoS) as a focal person as desired by the federal government to ensure the implementation of “action-oriented” Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) worked out as an inter-governmentally agreed set of targets relating to the international development that has been adopted by the United Nations as “Agenda 2030”.
The P&D communication specialist, Khush Nasiba, informed The Newsthat the provincial government had already aligned its development agenda, the KP Intergraded Development Strategy (IDS) 2014-18, to the UN SDGs and the provincial departments had been sensitised to work towards the achievement of the targets set in the agenda.
About the SDGs, she said 17 SDGs with 169 targets covering a broad range of sustainable development issues are mainly built on the lessons and successes of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but these are much broader in terms of scope, nature and the required means of implementation.
“It includes poverty eradication, food security, health, education, gender equality, water and sanitation, sustainable energy, employment, industrialisation, infrastructure development, addressing inequalities, human settlements, sustainable consumption and production, climate change, oceans and seas, ecosystems, peaceful and inclusive societies and the means of implementation,” Nasiba added.
According to the document shared with The News, the IDS 2014-18 documents and operationalises the government’s commitment to achieve intended goals to eliminating poverty and fostering prosperity through sustainable development as these are intrinsically linked.
It said the equal rights and opportunities for poor and rich, for men, women and children were core values feeding this link in the Integrated Development Strategy (IDS). Equal rights to universal education, universal health coverage and jobs, as well as an environment in which to establish businesses, are all critical in ending poverty and the provincial government through the IDS will put in all possible efforts to ensure its implementation, the document says.
The IDS promises strategic investments in gender-equitable education and health, transparent governance and an efficient justice and policing administration.It is built on two interlinked dimensions - poverty reduction and prosperity. The health, education and good governance are important elements in ensuring the wellbeing and prosperity of citizens, it further says.
It was learnt that the provincial government had planned to involve a mechanism of accountability in the implementation of the IDS as it thought that the best of policies would fail in the absence of transparency and accountability.
The federal government after a series of meetings in the Planning Commission in Islamabad directed all the relevant ministries and provincial departments through a letter to nominate their focal persons for the technical committee to workout goals and targets in their relevant perspectives to achieve the SDGs.
The P&D Department nominated Tariq Mehmood, Director, BoS as a focal person and mapped out its goals and the customized SDGs targets and indicators have also been circulated vide letter No. 1484/96/Coord/BOS/SDGs/176/2015 dated 21/10/2015 among the relevant departments in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for putting their inputs.