Status of women and family size

Population, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

THE population welfare department of the NWFP has chalked out plans to bring down the population growth rate in the province from 2.19 per cent to 1.84 per cent in the next three years. This move has apparently come as a result of pressure from foreign donors who have impressed on Islamabad that without controlling the population growth rate, Pakistan cannot make any progress.

This is a truism any thinking person should know. Some obvious facts can be stated here. With 3.14 million children being added to the country’s population every year, Pakistan would have to generate an additional GNP of $1.55 billion just to keep the GNP per capita at the current level of $492.
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Temporizing on transplant law

Health

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

LAT Sunday, the newspapers carried the picture of a Bangladeshi woman who has offered to sell one of her eyes to earn some cash. Her husband has abandoned her and she is desperate for money. Shefali, that is the name of the unfortunate woman, is perhaps the first one to offer an eye.

Otherwise, the sale of human kidneys for transplantation has become, in recent years, quite common in many Third World countries. But as this unethical practice has assumed alarming proportions, governments have moved to ban the trade in organs and regulate transplantation.
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Menace of fake degrees

Education, Politics

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

LAST week’s judgment by the Sindh High Court on an MPA’s degree verification issue was not the first of its kind. Justice Mushir Alam dismissed the petition of Malik Imran Khan who had questioned the action of the Sindh anti-corruption department and the University of Karachi for holding an enquiry into the authenticity of his B.Com degree.

This gentleman who was elected on the PML-N ticket to the NWFP assembly in October 2002, later found his election challenged by his rivals on the ground that his degree was “bogus”.
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Education and unemployment

Economy, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

ACCORDING to the Labour Force Survey for 2003-04 nearly 3.48 million people are without a job in Pakistan. This is said to be over eight per cent. While this is bad enough, a more serious cause of concern is that of those unemployed, 59.2 per cent are educated — and their ratio has been growing. In 2001-02 the educated comprised 55.1 per cent of the jobless.

This report reflects adversely on the economic planning of the government and its education policy. Most importantly such a high rate of unemployment has grave implications for social stability. If those without a job are educated, the frustration is even greater. Besides, it robs education of the incentive it should provide to the people generally: they can no longer be assured of a good job if they learn the literacy and numeracy skills.
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Tackling domestic violence

Terrorism and Violence, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

THE same day when Mukhtar Mai filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the acquittal of her alleged rapists by the Multan bench of the Lahore High Court, this paper carried a report of the Progressive Women’s Association (PWA), an Islamabad-based NGO, that 7,000 burn cases involving women were brought to only four hospitals in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The report didn’t specify the period in which these incidents of violence took place. Mukhtar Mai’s anguish is too recent for it to have been erased from people’s collective memory. She is the woman who was gangraped in 2002 in Meerwala village on the orders of a jirga.

And as long as men and women of conscience are alive, Mukhtar Mai will not find herself alone. Only recently an American woman, Benita Lubic, wrote to me, “I want you to know that we do care! I was most distressed reading an article in the Washington Post about Mukhtar Mai and the terrible problems she has had to face and the fight she has against her alleged rapists. My heart goes out to her and others who experience similar situations. I pray for her.”
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