ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage Marriyum Aurangzeb speaking at the International Conference on the Role of Women Parliamentarians in Strengthening Democracy and Social Justice here Tuesday asserted that the PML (N) government was vigorously pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as laid down in its vision 2025.
She said that the government had an unswerving commitment to promote socio-economic development in the country. She pointed out that under the leadership of PM Nawaz Sharif a remarkable achievement had been made with regard to Sustainable Development Goals particularly in the fields of health and education sectors and the PM Vision-2025 also had an important role in achieving the SDGs. The minister expressed that the Census which was being launched throughout the country from Wednesday would help collect authentic and credible data for evidence based policy making and legislation in the distribution of resources and finances across the country.
She recalled that the last census in the country was also held during the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1998 and now again it was being carried out under the leadership of same prime minister after a gap of 18 years.
She exhorted the people of country to cooperate with the census staff and provide them correct and authentic data. She reiterated that it was the constitutional and national duty of all citizens of Pakistan to provide correct information to the census staff as it was critical for resource distribution and future planning for the country.
She said that awareness campaign with regard to census would start from tomorrow.
The Federal Minister said that Pakistan was the first country in the world which had set up a full-fledged secretariat in the parliament in order to achieve development targets and its units were working in all provincial assemblies under the guidance of the Honourable Speaker National Assembly.
She said that the parliament, media and civil society were working in close coordination with each other to cope with the socio-economic challenges like malnutrition and population management in the country.
Marriyum said the government has signed agreements with the UNICEF and Gavi International as well as other world bodies in order have parliamentary oversight on challenges like malnutrition, routine Immunisation , provision of clean drinking water, health, education, climate change and waste management. She revealed that there has been no parliamentary oversight to monitor the progress in achieving development goals in the past but now the parliament was playing an effective supervisory role in this regard.
She said that the members of parliament at the federal as well as at provincial levels and local body representatives had forged a good coordination to achieve these objectives. Marriyum Aurangzeb said that the provincial governments had made appreciable headway towards achievement of social sector targets.
Referring to the role of media in achieving social development goals, the Minister said that every television channel was bound to allocate 10 percent of its airtime to social sector issues. She further said that the awareness, education and outreach to the community were also necessary to achieve these goals. She said that the Ministry of Planning and Development as well as provinces had formed units on SDGs which were playing a vital role to achieve these goals.
