Corruption

Health and education
The overall educational scenario in Pakistan is dismal. Much will depend on how much money does the federal government allocate in the budget and how does it implement the proposed National Education Policy, if the country wants to achieve the MDG in this regard.
In the newly announced budget only 2.3% of the GDP has been allocated to the education sector, which is far less than the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and demands an increased public expenditure on education to four per cent GDP by 2015.
On the other hand only 0.7% of the GDP has been allocated for the health sector despite the fact MDGs require that the public health expenditure must be raised up to two per cent of the GDP by the year 2015. Pakistan is lagging behind in its goal of achieving Universal Primary Education where the net primary enrollment ratio and literacy rate is far less than what has been prescribed in the MDGs.
Similarly, the performance in majority of health sectors is not satisfactory. There had been poor performance in reduction of child mortality rate including mortality rate among children less than five years and infant mortality rate.
The current allocation in education sector does not allow achieving the other set MDGs, which includes the universal enrollment at primary level and completion of education for a minimum of ten years with gender and regional parity; and raising enrollment at tertiary level of education.
The MDGs in health sector asked for the reducing burden on tertiary health care system and overcoming inadequacies in the primary and secondary healthcare services while overcoming professional, managerial and delivery deficiencies in the district health system.
The overall progress on the MDGs indicators suggests that education and health never remained, as the top priority of any government and there was a dire need to increase the budget in the respective sectors in order to meet the MDGs, which would ultimately lead to the... [continues]

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