ISLAMABAD: “Although it is important to provide treatment to children suffering from malnutrition, but there should also be a focus on eradicating malnutrition and disease,” Asif Hayat, representative of Pakistan Emergency Food Security Alliance (PEFSA) on Monday.

He was speaking to Dawn at the opening of a photo exhibition titled ‘Saving Lives, Spreading Smiles’ at the Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA) on Monday. The exhibition featured 49 photographs calling attention to issues of nutrition, food security, hygiene and livelihoods in Pakistan.

The PEFSA, Mr Hayat said, spent 15 months in two districts of Sindh, Badeen and Sanghar, focusing on malnutrition among the people in the area.

“We reached the conclusion that the situation in the two districts was bad enough to be called an emergency. In both places, people face two major problems which are financial issues and hygiene,” he said.

Mr Hayat explained that people cannot afford to eat a balanced diet so a number of children are malnourished. Inaccessibility to clean drinking water and lack of proper drainage for sewerage causes diseases such as diarrhoea, he said.

He said the PEFSA also realised that people do not have economic activities to participate in, especially in the months of June, July and August and decided to involve them in addressing the issues facing their communities.

Some 6,000 people were selected from the communities and were assigned tasks of cleaning streams, removing garbage and improving the sewerage system. “Each person received Rupees 7,200 per month and was employed for three months,” he said.

PEFSA Communications Manager Huzan Waqar told Dawn that an awareness campaign was also launched for the residents of 12 Union Councils of Sanghar and 16 Union Councils of Badeen.

“People were informed about consuming a balanced diet and told to make food a priority. It had been seen that mothers would use the money they had to buy shoes for their children, rather than buying food items needed for a balanced diet,” she said. A visitor to the exhibition, Mohammad Ali, who is a teacher, said malnutrition is a major issue in Pakistan.

“People laughed at the Sindh Chief Minister when he said children in Thar had not died from hunger but from poverty. However, there was some truth to it. People die of malnutrition when they cannot afford to buy food,” he said.

He called for the government to build roads in remote areas and create employment opportunities to people by establishing industrial zones in rural areas and offering tax rebates.

“Such a policy would not only address the problem of unemployment but also prevent massive rural to urban migration,” he said.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2015

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