Islamabad, August 17, 2005 - The voices of Pakistan's citizens, from villagers, to youth representatives, civil society leaders, media editors and parliamentarians, came together across a series of encounters to leave the visiting World Bank President with a powerful impression of the country's development challenges. Paul Wolfowitz learned how important education was for Pakistan's parents with more than before men seeing the benefit in educating their daughters. He heard about the urgent need to manage the country's water resources and he heard from village women who were now organized in development committees, changing their lives. "Thanks to these encounters I learned a lot in a very short time," Wolfowitz said as the Pakistan leg of his South Asia tour drew to a close today. "Getting the perspectives of people who are active on the development frontlines and being in touch with ordinary people was a very important input to my understanding of the country." Woflowitz made it a priority to hear directly from among Pakistan's 150 million people about their problems and priorities. His very first meeting, hours after arriving on Sunday, was with a diverse group of people active in fields, ranging from primary education in urban areas to social science research and polling to women's education in rural areas. During a lively exchange Seema Aziz of Care Foundation described a huge demand or what she called a "desperate desire" among poor people in Pakistan to give their children a quality education. The key word was "quality", Wolfowitz heard. Barring some islands of excellence, there was a shortage of properly trained teachers, schools did not equip children with employable skills, and management of public schools was poor. The story was similar in higher education. The heartening thing, though, was that "everyone wants education. It is a myth that the poor do not understand its value," Aziz said. The good news, reported Ijaz Shafi Gilani of Gallup, was that contrary to five years ago, a majority of Pakistani men wanted to see their daughters educated too. Wolfowitz also received a direct lesson in the value of community organization and women's participation in development decisions when he met residents of Dhok Tabarak village in Punjab province. Village women described vividly how their participation made all the difference. For more information, see Changing Lives in a Village in Pakistan. Development issues were also uppermost for the parliamentarians who met the Bank's president. Representing both ruling and opposition parties they brought to the table an issue crucial to Pakistan's development: water. Naveed Qamar of the Pakistan People's Party pointed to the irony of the current situation: even as the Indus system, Pakistan's lifeline, was in flood, there was not enough water to irrigate the fields because the canal system had fallen into disrepair. Several others echoed the centrality of water to Pakistan achieving prosperity. All agreed management of the resource was the key issue; supply was not the problem. As with the civil society representatives who Wolfowitz met earlier, the parliamentarians raised the quality of education as a major subject in their talks. They also stressed the need for Pakistan to sustain its current growth and make it equitable and the need to provide jobs and attack hunger and poverty. Promising the World Bank would support policies which were good for the people of Pakistan irrespective of the government of the day, Wolfowitz pointed to the world's stake in Pakistan's prosperity. "It is an important country in an important region and a potential leader of the Muslim world," he said A discussion with newspaper editors was wide-ranging, covering topics from water and growth to the Bank's role in Pakistan. "There is no one formula, no one size that fits all," Wolfowitz said. "Our mission is to contribute to poverty alleviation wherever we see an opportunity. Equally, we have an obligation to point out if money is going down the drain." He reiterated the importance of Pakistan's development for the whole world: "I am very encouraged by what I have seen on this visit." |
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