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CSR on Poverty Alleviation
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While ruing charity being an unregulated sector in Pakistan, the country’s eminent businessmen and social workers have called for regulating charity in order to effectively alleviate poverty in the country.
“A lot of effort and resources are being wasted due to unregulated sector of charity, which is not helping in achieving the goal of poverty alleviation,” said Prof Syed Hussain Haider from Akhuwat, while speaking at 6th seminar and panel discussion on “Poverty Alleviation through Corporate Social Responsibility” organized by National Forum for Environment and Health (NFEH), here at Jinnah Auditorium of Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Prof Syed Hussain Haider said that there are a lot of topics, which are being taught as separate subjects, but charity has never been considered to be taught as a subject in our educational institutions.
He said that Pakistanis are known for making enormous charity but unfortunately still far from mitigating poverty from the country. Basically, he said, our charity endeavors are demand-driven whereas we need to convert charity into a supply-driven venture. For example, he said that there used to be excess supply of food in Mitthi (Sindh) during famine-like situation, which caused loss of a lot of effort and resources. Similarly, there are areas, where either there is no supply of food or is insufficient to the meet the needs of the people during hard times. “That’s why; we need to regulate this unregulated sector of charity in order to move towards achieving the goal of alleviating poverty from the country,” he asserted.
Dr. Owais Farooqui, Chairman Focus Pakistan, said that poverty alleviation is a multi-dimensional issue, so it can’t be achieved through mere economic revival. Quoting a Chinese proverb “Don’t give them a fish, teach them how to catch a fish”, he said that the resources should not just be doled out to the destitute rather they should be used to improve the lot of the poor people in the country. “When people get anything free, they get to shy away from work,” he said that the countries, which alleviated poverty, had followed work ethics.
He emphasized the need to control the growing rate of population and urbanization, which will lead to scarcity of water and food in future. “If we are poor today, we will be poorer tomorrow,” he added. Therefore, he stressed the need to promote education, which in his opinion, is the most poorly managed sector in the country. “The government will never focus on education,” he said, adding that the education is the only way to move towards the objective of poverty alleviation in the country.
Ambreen Waheed also emphasized the importance of using the potential of people instead of giving them money to alleviate poverty. “The Benazir Income Support Programme is counterproductive, which is keeping the beneficiaries dependent,” she added. She said that we need to promote entrepreneurship and the society will pull itself out of the poverty loop.
Abid Malik, CEO Indus Venture, emphasized the need to circulate the money in the economy, saying that concentration of money in a few hands was increasing poverty in the country. During economic depressions of the US in 1929 and 2008, he said, it was revealed that 25 per cent of the total wealth was in the hands of 1 per cent population. He pointed out that Zakat and investment help alleviate poverty.
Bashir Malik, Chairman Bin Qutab Foundation, said that we need to prioritize our needs, while saying that if we keep on building hospitals and do not work on prevention of diseases then it will not help mitigate poverty. He also suggested forming an alliance to stop corruption, which will also help reduce poverty in the country.
Nauman Kabir, SVP LCCI, believed that poverty was the mother of all evils and the civil society must come forward and help alleviate poverty in the country. He also stressed upon the entrepreneurs to realize their corporate social responsibility and channelize efforts and resources to create maximum impact towards alleviating poverty in the country.
Naeem Qureshi, Chairman NFEH, said that NFEH has been organizing seminars and events to promote Corporate Social Responsibility and help alleviate poverty. While maintaining the sad fact of loss of 2,000 lives due to heat wave in Karachi this year, he said, NFEH is also working to improve environment and have planted 600,000 trees in Karachi and planning to cultivate 300,000 more plants in the next three months.
Besides, Qazi Zulqarnain Siddiqui, Rafeh Iqbal, Khalid Khan and Engr. Nadeem Ashraf also addressed the audience.
Mustafa Tahir
Media Coordinator
Tel: 35213853
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