PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has dropped a scheme designed to hire the services of religious scholars for a mobilisation campaign to create public awareness of birth spacing for better mother and child health.

The scheme titled `involvement of imam/khateeb/religious scholars for promotion/advocacy of population welfare programme` was reflected in the Annual Development Program 201617.

The campaign was proposed for a period of three years with the population welfare department intending to spend Rs100 million on it.

The relevant of ficials told Dawn that the scheme was dropped due to financialconstraintsfacedbythe provincial government during the current fiscal.

They said under the scheme, the PWD was to hire religious scholars and prayer leaders to create public awareness of birth spacing in light of Islamic teachings in Friday sermons.`Initially, we`d planned to give Rs10,000 to religious scholars and prayer leaders each on monthly basis as remuneration,` a PWD official said.

The official said for sensitising the people to birth spacing, the department had proposed the selection of a religious scholar or prayer leader in each of the over 1,000 wards in the province previously known as union councils.

He however said the government didn`t accept the idea of launching the scheme throughout the province in one go and instead suggested its execution in phases.

The official said the department had finalised arrangements for the launch of the scheme in 250 wards but they all went down the drain as the government refused to release the allocated funds for it.

He said of the Rs100 million allocations for the scheme in three years, only Rs17 million was meant for the current financial year.

`It is strange that the provincial government is not ready to release even a meagre amount of Rs17 million for an important cause of ensuring healthy life of mothers and children,` he said.

The official said if the people were not sensitised to birth spacing, there was a highly likelihood of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa not meeting the goals set by the Family Planning 2020London Summit.

He said in the summit, which took place in 2012 and attended by 69 countries, Pakistan had agreed to increase the contraceptive prevalence rate to 50 per cent from the current 32 per cent.

The of ficial said the increase in CPR was one of the preventive measures to minimise the mother mortality rate and inf ants` mortality rate.

He said currently, 206 mothers died after 100,000 live births in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The of ficial said of 1,000 live births, 58 infants died.

He said the involvement of religious scholars and prayer leaders was one of the initiatives to increase the contraceptive prevalence rate for birth spacing.

The official said the Bureau of Statistics, KP`s population was 29.17 million with two per cent growth rate and that it would be doubled in the next 35 years if efforts were not made to overcome the high population rate.

He said the rising population was a main cause of the multiple socioeconomic problems but unfortunately, the population growth was not the priority of any ruling political party.

The official said efforts would be made to include the scheme of involving religious scholars in the mobilisation campaign.