ISLAMABAD: Parliamentary Secretary Kanwal Shauzab has said that the government is making endeavours to expedite the implementation and localisation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
She said this during a meeting with a delegation of representatives of various United Nations (UN) agencies to discuss SDGs agendas with regards to monitoring and evaluation, civil registration and vital statistics system, and population control programmes.
The delegation comprised Saad Sultan of UN Women, Miral Ahsan representing SDGs Secretariat, NAP, Muqaddisa Mehreen of UNICEF, Muqaddar Shah of UNPF while Health Section of Planning Commission Chief Dr Muhammad Asif was also present in the meeting.
The parliamentary secretary stated that monitoring, evaluation and data collection for the 17 goals under SDGs require trained human resource.
For the localisation of SDGs agenda, the prioritised goals need to be translated and communicated to the local bodies which would not only help in effective implementation but would also give ownership to the local representatives.
Kanwal Shauzab noted that Pakistan has one of the largest percentages of young people where 64 per cent of the total population is below the age of 30 while 29 per cent population is between 15 and 29 years of age. The government of Pakistan is deliberating to launch vocational training programmes at large scale to equip youth with skills and relevant expertise to make them compatible with the modern job market.
The parliamentary secretary underlined that the government aims to empower women and provide them facilities and an enabling environment to make them self-sufficient.
‘Empowerment of women will have a productive impact on generations to come’, stated the parliamentary secretary.
It was decided that a national level conference would be organised with the inclusion of federal, provincial and district level SDGs representatives to discuss the future agenda of advocacy and localisation.
