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| February 13, 2007 | Tuesday | Muharram 24, 1428 |
Finance division’s rejoinder
ISLAMABAD, Feb 12: Responding to a report headlined ‘Public dissatisfied with governance: survey’, published in Dawn on Monday, the finance division of the federal government has said in a statement that the news item is based on its author’s interpretation of the findings of the PRSP Annual Report 2005-06.
The statement said: “It is wrong to say that full findings of the PSLM 2004-05 Survey have been withheld. The fact is that all the findings of the Survey are available in the relevant documents published by the Federal Bureau of Statistics and the Centre for Research on Poverty Reduction and Income Distribution of the Planning Commission. The FBS has also placed the PSLM findings on its website. Nothing has been kept secret.
“The PRCP report only reports the progress in the PRCP-monitored indicators. It is not meant to report the whole findings of the PSLM which are available in the several documents as stated above. It is useful to point out that PSLM 2004-05 was published in June 2005 by the FBS. The PRSP report 2005-06 is a comprehensive report that has examined the progress in the PRCP input, intermediate and output indicators during last 4 years. Unfortunately the author has not reviewed the progress made during this period. The perception data as given in the report should be analysed with the progress in the PRSP indicators.
“According to the PSLM, overall 60% of households are satisfied with schooling. The Dawn report has wrongly attributed this high level of satisfaction with private schools while the questions asked in the PSLM 2004-05 referred only the Government facilities. This shows that education sector reforms introduced by the federal as well as provincial governments during the last four-five years have enhanced the level of public satisfaction.
“Moreover, the gross as well as net school enrolment has increased at the primary, middle and matric levels, gender gap in schooling has reduced and there is a substantial progress in literacy level. Similarly, health indicators have shown a steady progress e.g. child immunisation has increased and women’s access to health services has also improved. To draw definitive conclusions, based upon people's perceptions, about results that are only verifiable from relevant data is erroneous.”
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