Karachi: The Sindh government has announced the expansion of the European Union (EU)-assisted Peoples’ Poverty Reduction Programme (PPRP) to shanty areas of urban centres of the province for economic empowerment of women of these deprived communities.
The announcement to this effect was made by Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, as he spoke at the launching of the PPRP in Ghotki District of the province. The Sindh Rural Support Organisation has been executing the PPRP since 2008 to provide financial and technical assistance to the underprivileged women in rural areas for entrepreneurship or get involved in other income generating activities to help their families struggling in poverty.
The programme was initially launched in two districts of Sindh and was expanded to eight more districts with a funding of 82 million Euros from the EU.
At present, the programme is being executed in 20 districts of Sindh with total funding of Rs35 billion from the Sindh government.
Syed Murad Ali Shah said that these funds were directly being provided to rural women for the prosperity of their households.
He said the PPRP had so far benefited 1.3 million rural households in Sindh as no other welfare initiative of the government had such a massive outreach and large number of beneficiaries.
“No doubt, it is hard to see the effects of this massive programme as it is aimed at transformation of needy households as it is not executed to build roads, bridges and hospitals in rural areas that are seen to everyone,” he said.
Ali Shah said the PPRP would be expanded to remaining four districts of the province — Karachi, Hyderabad, Shaheed Benazirabad and Naushahro Feroz.
Chairman of Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP), Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, said the PPP since the regime of the party’s founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had launched programmes aimed at poverty alleviation in the country in accordance with its manifesto.
He said the initiatives like the PPRP had been launched by the PPP’s Sindh government as he wanted to serve all the destitute women in the country.
He said the previous federal government of PPP had launched the landmark Benazir Income Support Programme as the World Bank and prestigious universities in the outside world had recognised it as one of the successful schemes launched anywhere in the world aimed at poverty alleviation.
He said the PPRP-like schemes would be launched all over the country to benefit the deprived women anywhere in Pakistan after the Peoples’ Party emerged victorious in the next elections.
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