By YesPakistan.com Staff Writer

"South Asian governments must make a new compact with their civil society organizations, treating them as allies rather than antagonists," write Mahbub ul Haq, author of the report Human Development in South Asia 1997.

This advice was recently taken to heart by the Pakistani government when Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf's formed a task force on human development in June 2001. President Musharraf appointed task force about human development. NGOs are part of this task force. For instance, three of the officers of the Human Development Foundation, an NGO with health, education and credit programs in Pakistan, are part of this group.

Task force members have been asked to come up with a national plan that will reproduce holistic social sector human development intervention. The task force began working in early September.

This type of cooperation is not only beneficial to the government, which can save resources, financial and other, by capitalizing on the NGOs' assets and strengths, but also those who benefit from this cooperation the most: Pakistan's deprived population. The poor, illiterate and disenfranchised.

A number of civil society projects have been organized in South Asia which have successfully provided social services at the grassroots level in a very cost-effective manner, thus reducing the bill for putting these services into place by governments.

One very good example is the Orangi Pilot Project in the slums of Karachi, Pakistan, which was the brainchild of social scientist the late Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan.

Launched in 1980, the goal of the project was to help the residents of Orangi, a squatters colony, to build their own sanitation and drainage system. OPP was later expanded to work with the people of Orangi and its surrounding areas by providing a number of other services in the areas of housing, health and education, among others.

The area, whose residents included Pakistanis from all of the country's ethnic groups, thus dubbed "mini Pakistan", lacked government authority and sanctions, along with major outside support. It is a shining example of a self-help project in a much neglected part of Pakistan.

Today, about 90 percent of Orangi's over one million residents have built their own sanitation system with an investment of nearly Rs. 75 million of their own money. What is important to remember is that the OPP did not do it, but the people did it themselves with some help from OPP in technical assistance and mobilization at a cost of less than Rs. 1,000 per family - one-tenth of what it would cost for the government to do it.

OPP is a self-managed, self-financed and self-maintained project under the leadership of community activists.

A positive repercussion in the area of human development from OPP is that the infant mortality rate in Orangi went down from 130 in 1994 to 37 in 1991. In addition, there is now a process in place for people to improve their income, housing, education and health through their own initiative and they are succeeding in doing so.

The success of OPP hasn't just benefited Pakistan though. This model has been replicated around the world.

OPP's example makes it abundantly clear that the government in Pakistan needs to take a closer look at the success of NGOs and civil service organizations and how they have successfully improved the quality of human life for the average Pakistani with limited resources.

Another benefit of using NGO initiatives is the possibility of reaching the poorest and most vulnerable groups in society. More often than not, their lives are not touched by normal government programs and they remain mired in poverty and illiteracy.

The ability to deliver services to the poorest and the weakest sectors of society has been demonstrated by several successful NGO initiatives across South Asia. Apart from OPP, the Edhi Trust is another very good example of an organization that is stepping in where the government has, knowingly or unknowingly, stepped out.

It is hoped that Pakistan's task force on human development does not simply produce more paperwork but little concrete results. Its establishment is a positive development and effort needs to be made through it to bridge the gap between the government and NGOs to improve the lives of millions of Pakistanis who remain poor and illiterate, but hoping for a better future.

Date/Time Last Modified: 6/18/2002 8:06:26 AM

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