Population management described as need of hour

By Abdul Qadir Qureshi
(Pakistan News & Features Services) 

Senator Nisar Memon, a former federal minister, has emphatically stressed to tackle the issue of population management, describing it as need of the hour. 

“Pakistan had entered decade of 2020 with a population of 207 million putting a huge demand on already scarce resources. While the new regime was struggling to find its feet on the ground, the pandemic of COVID-19 arrived and caused death, disaster and economic hardships,” he observed in an interview with PNFS on the occasion of World Population Day on July 11. 

“The governance came to be tested and challenged, particularly in the weak public health system which had received scant attention in all these years. The country faced a double jeopardy of huge population and lockdown impact on economy and citizens leading to increased corruption, street crime and vulnerability to hitherto controlled terrorism,” he added. 

“Population planning was introduced in the 1960s as a government policy with international help but fell in with change of government and rise of conservatives. Since then neither serious attention to planning nor governance of population have been given with its consequences on citizens’ fundamental rights,” he regretted. 

“We have no option but to join the ranks of other Muslim countries like Bangladesh to control the population for progress and development. The continued status quo following the old beaten path of lack of population control has driven us to reliance on international support with aid and loan. Time has come to stand up as a sovereign nation mobilizing internal resources of human power and build on its own natural wealth by human resource development and allocation of budgets to education, skill building and social services,” Senator Nisar Memon emphasized. 

“COVID-19 has given us the opportunity to catch up with other nations by building a knowledge-based society enhancing existing telecommunication and information technology infrastructure to leapfrog in science, research, technology and education,” he pointed out. 

“It is time to remind ourselves of the Malthusian Theory of Population which states that population grows exponentially, thus outgrowing a society’s resources which grow arithmetically. This is an appropriate theory for preventive and positive checks on population,” he suggested.