Pakistan's Social Action Program: a success or failure?

By YesPakistan.com Staff Writer

In the arena of human development, many programs have been initiated by governments and world bodies to better the lives of human beings in Pakistan and elsewhere. While these have met success to some degree, they often suffer from a number of drawbacks which limit their ability to fully meet their goals. More importantly, their success is often nominal in comparison to programs established by NGOs and civil society organizations which tend to be more grassroots-oriented than these top-down programs. One example where this is evident is Pakistan's Social Action Program (SAP).

Pakistan launched SAP in 1993-94. This program, which was heavily funded by the Pakistani government and international bodies like the World Bank, aimed to address a number of Pakistanis' basic needs that were not being met. In particular, primary education, basic health care, population welfare and rural water supply and sanitation. SAP covered all Pakistani government primary schools.

Eighty percent of the program's finances were met by the government. The remaining 20 percent were expected to be provided by outside agencies. Some of these major donors included the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the government of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

There are mixed reviews of the real success of SAP in Pakistan. In recent interviews, the SAP output indicators have been seen as positive. Through this program, the primary school participation rate improved from 67 percent to 71 percent for boys and from 36 percent to 43 percent for girls. The increase in the public spending in SAP sectors from 1.7 percent of Pakistan's GDP in 1992-93 to 2.2 percent of GDP in 1995-96 was a crucial factor in bringing about these achievements.

Donor assessments, on the other hand, note that the increase in social indicators as claimed by the Pakistani government is insignificant when they are compared to the huge levels of additional expenditures.

To buttress this point, the Pakistan Integrated Household Survey shows that net primary enrolments have in fact decreased among males and females, as well as in urban and rural areas between 1991 and 1995. The reasons given for this are political interference, corruption and a lack of emphasis on educational quality. These issues meant that there was no significant increase in learning achievement as a result of SAP.

SAP-II, the second phase of the SAP program, was formulated for the years 1996 to 2000. Once again, twenty percent of the total investment made for SAP-II was to be met by foreign assistance.

In the education sector, the SAP-II program was expanded to cover non-formal education, middle schooling and vocational education.

In terms of social sector development, SAP is still perceived as a major breakthrough. However, like other similar plans of the past, it is not without problems.

The biggest among these is the absence of community ownership in SAP's projects and the nominal role NGOs play in their implementation so far. This is a major error as experience has shown in Pakistan and other parts of the developing world, the great success of human development projects via grassroots, community participation.

The other problems could easily be dealt with if grassroots participation was part of the SAP program. These issues include poor supervision, political interference in the hiring and transfer of teachers, not enough trained and well-qualified teachers and the lack of relevance of the school curriculum to local needs. Time and again, grassroots participation has proven that if the community is directly involved in designing and managing social development projects like SAP, they would directly supervise its progress, arrange to train its own local teachers, and develop a curriculum that speaks to the needs of the community's parents and children.

SAP's effectiveness as a provider of urgently needed social services is unlikely to be fulfilled unless these problems are addressed properly and urgently.

Date/Time Last Modified: 6/18/2002 8:06:37 AM

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