Governance Forum A Governance Forum was organized by Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi on 17th June, 2014 as a part of its social responsibility initiative. The agenda of the seminar, part of a three part series, was to showcase commendable service delivery initiatives by the Government of Sindh. The first seminar of the series, the “Taxation Forum” was held on 25th of February, 2014, IBA, along with the Government of Sindh. The agenda was focusing on enhancing tax receipts of GoS. Revenue collection agencies of the province, the Sindh Revenue Board, the Excise & Taxation Department and Board of Revenue were a part of it discussed their performance and recommendations were given for the future. Performance of the Sindh Revenue Board was presented as a model to be emulated regionally since the growth in tax receipts seen has been unprecedented. The Governance Forum was a logical follow up on the Taxation Forum, as higher tax collection needs to be justified by improved service delivery. The timing for this could not have better as the budget was presented only last week. As the Government of Sindh embarks on the next fiscal year of, the seminar reviewed the Sindh Government’s performance in the previous years. The initiatives of the Sindh Government were documented and consolidated into a report which was disseminated at the event. The report was divided into six sections. Section I comprised the initiatives by various Departments that focus on Poverty Alleviation; Section 2 Public Private Partnerships; Section III on Fiscal Procurement Reforms; Section IV use of Information and Communication Technology; Section V on Sindh High Court Management Information Systems and Section VI on other miscellaneous projects. These sections presents information on large-scale programs as well as on small-scale localized initiatives, which have been undertaken with meager resources and need further resources for scaling up. The Governance Forum was attended by a number of dignitaries. The session covered Poverty Alleviation Initiatives and Public Private Partnerships. Fiscal and Procurement Reforms were covered in the Taxation Forum, and will be discussed again in the third part of this series; IT Forum along with other IT initiatives and the Sindh High Court MIS. Various dignitaries of the Sindh government as well as representatives from its private sector partners revealed details of innovative projects underway in the province. NGOs and community partners that Government of Sindh works with also set up stalls outside the conference hall to display artifacts that enterprising women of Sindh make after receiving training from Govt. of Sindh program. Murad Ali Shah, advisor to the Chief Minister Sindh, also graced the event as the chief guest. Sajjad Saleem Hotiana, Chief Secretary GoS, delivered the inaugural speech, highlighting the impact of the 18th Amendment towards greater devolution and empowerment of the provinces. Mr. Hotiana emphasized that the notable shift towards Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode of governance was altering the development landscape of Sindh. Next, Tasneem Ahmad Siddiqui, Chairman Saiban, expressed his candid views regarding the prevailing state of governance. Mr. Siddiqui was fairly critical of the approach taken by successive governments in Sindh with regard to the planning and development paradigm. He wondered aloud why after 60 years, Pakistan was still trying to alleviate poverty despite three 10-year spells of high growth. However, while lamenting the state of the education and low-income housing sectors in particular, he identified the health sector as an area which had posted some improvement in recent times. This was followed by a presentation on the Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Youth Development Program (BBSYDP), delivered by Air Marshall Riaz Shaikh, Chairman, Benazir Bhutto Shaheed HR Research and Development Board. After outlining the structure of the BBSYDP, Mr. Riaz highlighted the program’s achievements. These include: training of over 150,000 unemployed youth from 2008-2013, with a further 35,000 attending training since February, 2014; development of curriculum and training resources in English, Sindhi and Urdu for 389 trades; estimated employment of around 33% of program graduates, according to a World Bank SMS survey. In line with the success of this program, the Government of Sindh has allocated Rs.984.20 million to the BBYSDP in the budget presented on Friday with a target of training 65, 000 unskilled youth of Sindh in different demand driven trades. The newly constituted Board has planned to improve existing curricula of the trainings with the modules of Business Development and Soft Skills so that youth may qualify for micro finance facilities after the successful completion of their training; which will be offered to them in partnership with Sindh Bank. Next, the Director of IBA Sukkur, Nisar Ahmed Siddiqui, revealed salient details of the Sindh Talent Hunt Program (THP) with specific reference to IBA Sukkur. He outlined how the program was a crucial aid for talented students of rural Sindh hailing from poor families. The program includes provision of free books and tuition, monthly stipend of Rs. 3,000, and free of cost hostel facility and transportation. Around 150 to 200 students benefit from the program each year. Mr. Siddiqui expressed pride in the fact that several beneficiaries of Sindh THP had gone on to win competitions held at LUMS, KSBL, Preston University, etc., giving evidence that the program was imparting top notch education and grooming to students. The Sindh Talent Hunt Program is also running successfully in IBA, Karachi and Aga Khan School of Nursing. Moving on to another GoS poverty reduction project, Shereen Narijo, Additional Secretary GoS, provided details of the Landless Hari Program (LHP). This program, launched in 2008, oversaw the distribution of over 41,520 acres of state land among deserving haris in its first phase, along with cash grants for land development provided to three-fourths of all households. The program has proven to be an effective source of employment and self-employment. Per acre yield has also increased due to the agricultural inputs provided. On average, 227 beneficiary households have experienced a rise in income of Rs. 104,085. Ms. Narijo also highlighted key facets of the Sindh government’s Union Council Based Poverty Reduction Program (UCBPRP). This program, focused on empowerment of women, was initiated in districts Kashmore-Kandkhot and Shikarpur in 2008, and was then expanded to Jacobabad and Tharparker in 2010. It allows elected members of Community Organizations, Village Organizations and Local Support Organizations - exclusively women – to contribute in making community-level decisions. In order to achieve the program objectives, the community is provided with livelihood support in the shape of grants and interest-free loans. The program enables local small entrepreneurs, mainly women, to set up and start their home-based business. It has an outlay of Rs. 5 billion over a period of six years and it is going to be further expanded to more districts of Sindh. This was followed by a presentation on the Community Development Program (CDP) by Program Coordinator, Aijaz Mahesar. Mr. Mahesar shared details of the CDP’s contributions in the education, health, water and sanitation, and skills development sectors. These include provision of free education and scholarships at leading institutes in Sindh; providing eye restoring surgery to 48,294 poor patients at LRBT hospitals located in Gambat, Rashidabad, Tando Bago, North Karachi and Korangi; provision of clean drinking water through hand pumps, and pit latrines for improved sanitation; skill development and market linkages for women in traditional skills such as ralli, quilt-making and tie-and-dye. An allocation of Rs.200 million has been kept in this year budgets for the Community Development Program. The second session of the Governance forum focused on Public Private Partnerships which is essentially a service or a venture funded and operated through the government and one or more private sector companies. It was initiated by Dr Adeeb-ul-Hasan Rizvi, the head of Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplant. In his speech, Dr Rizvi informed the audience of various ventures undertaken by SIUT which have been partly or entirely funded by public contributions. SIUT has been a prime example of Public Private Partnerships, and is at the forefront of providing quality health services at subsidized rates or entirely free, specifically in the impoverished areas of interior Sindh. The SIUT, under Dr. Adeeb’s tireless leadership has established dialysis and medical centers in all corners of Karachi as well as Chablani Medical Center in Sukkur that caters to the medical needs of people from interior Sindh, southern Punjab and western Baluchistan. He concluded his speech with the hard hitting and profound quote “We cannot let them die just because they cannot afford to live”. This was followed by a presentation on Public private partnership (PPP) Unit in Sindh by Mr. Sohail Ahmed Rajput, Secretary Finance, and Government of Sindh. In his speech, he focused on ensuring that the government services are delivered in the most efficient manner and that the government will focus on creating opportunities for growth for the private sector which would contribute to the economic development of Sindh. His presentation also focused on the introduction of regulatory and legal framework for PPP in Sindh and as a follow up on that, he showed us some projects that have initiated under the PPP facility on different fronts like the Karachi-Thatta and Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas Dual carriageways, Sindh Nooriabad Gas power projects and Run of the river project, Jhirk Mulla Katiar Bridge project, National Institute of Child Health Security & Fire Safety Contract, Karachi Waste to energy, Solar Energy projects and the Bus Rapid transit - Yellow line. He also announced that there were other PPP projects in the pipeline which would eventually contribute to the economic development of Sindh. Mr. Aziz Kabani, Director Sindh Education Foundation (SEF), in his presentation emphasized on SEF’s major project “Adopt a school”. He noted that the literacy rate in Sindh is 59% which is considerably low and that for a population of 42 million, there were only 47557 schools and only 10% of the population was enrolled for education. Therefore Sindh was seriously lacking in education providing institutions and that was where SEF had come in with their SEF PPP schools which would cost less than one-third of the cost of a child per month in Public school. He also noted that the facilities provided in the Public schools were abysmal and the conditions of the buildings were dilapidated and that SEF schools would work to learn from the issues faced by the public schools. He said that under SEF’s Adopt-a-school program, the accountability would be on the school themselves, neither with the students nor their parents so the schools that are under-achieving would have only themselves to answer. He concluded his session by saying that SEF’s program was geared not just towards human resource development, but also towards creating employment opportunities and building generations, benefiting Sindh. The final speech promoting PPP was presented by Dr. Riaz Memon who focused on Public Private Health Initiatives (PPHI). He pointed out that the Sindh government had infrastructure valued at approximately Rs 20 billion which was utilized sub-optimally or was entirely dysfunctional and it was the purpose of PPHI to focus on making them operationally manageable to provide government health facilities. Another focus of PPHI was on the mother-child health care with 34 such health cares established out of which 29 work round the clock. They have also introduced free mobile ultrasound facility, family planning support and other vertical programs through man and material, vaccination programs, mini laboratories to facilitate diagnosis and provision of quality medicines free of cost. He concluded by telling the audience about the provincial support unit which is in direct contact with community for any issues, suggestions and monitoring for the betterment of health delivery system. In his concluding remarks, Mr. Waseem, Additional Chief Secretary, Mr. Muhammad Waseem talked about the projects in the pipeline which included Bus Rapid Transit Lines in Karachi in partnership with JICA. He said JICA had concerns about removing encroachments but he showed full resolve in removing and resettling encroachments before building transport infrastructure. Dr. Ishrat, Dean and Director IBA, Karachi, suggested that all archaic rules and regulations be scrapped and all relevant laws be documented online. This eliminated space for corruption and wrongdoing. Mr. Murad Ali Shah, Advisor to Chief Minister for Finance, in a soul searching exercise, admitted that the fact the need to bring in private sector to provide public service delivery has meant that something has been wrong with the government from the start. He also added, that the new budget has been a step in the right direction as the Annual Development Plan is focused on repairing operating and maintaining existing infrastructure, rather than building new ones. The event proved to be successful as it brought under one roof all the departments of the Government of Sindh to discuss past mistakes and make recommendations for the future. The recommendations that came forward include institutionalizing these programs so their impact can be more widespread and to have third party monitoring for government programs to increase their credibility.
Posted on: Mon, 23 Jun 2014 06:11:31 +0000