Nutrition project: politician to replace social scientist
Sindh government has all set to appoint a politician, Sarfaraz Rajar as Vice Chairman of the Sindh Social Protection Authority in place of a social scientist, Haris Gazdar. Rajar, is also Special Assistant to the Sindh Chief Minister.
Formal approval of his appointment will be given at forthcoming meeting of the Sindh Cabinet scheduled on April 15 (Tuesday).
Sindh Social Protection Authority is supervising nutrition centric social protection component of a foreign funded project, Accelerated Action Plan for Reduction of Stunting and Malnutrition (AAP).
The project envisages a pilot Conditional Cash Transfer programme focused on first 1000 days of life by incentivizing health check-ups of pregnant and lactating mothers, growth monitoring and immunization of children under 2 years of age, through the provision of a regular and predictable cash transfer to targeted poor and vulnerable households.
The seat had fallen vacant in September last year due to resignation of Haris Gazdar. The office of the Vice Chairman is most important as it heads the Authority in absence of the Chief Minister Sindh, who is its chairman. According to Haris Gazdar he had resigned from the office due to his 'inability to give required time and attention' to the SSPA affairs. Previously he was Coordinator to the Sindh Chief Minister on Social Protection.
Talking to the Express Tribune he said that the SSPA has made a good start. It has to continue to work hard to establish its credentials. "It requires and active and dynamic leadership which I am certain that current team will provide", he said.
When asked about reasons for not utilizing most of the funds allocated for the SSPA during his tenure, he said due to lack of capacity. According to him some of the important initiatives could not be translated into action due capacity issues. "It is my learning that the SSPA can establish legitimacy through its Conditional Cash Transfers and then will be able to take on those challenges", he added.
It is pertinent to mention here that Sindh government had allocated a big amount of Rs22.42 billion during financial year 2023-24 for different projects of social protection but the SSPA was failed to utilize it. It could only utilize Rs213 million throughout the year out of the total allocated funds. This year an amount of Rs12.26 billion has been allocated for the SSPA.
It is worth to mention that the Sindh government had also started a project namely Social Protection Delivery System to increase capacity of the SSPA and other allied departments. According to Gazdar it was just started when he had left role of the Coordinator to the Sindh Chief Minister. He was not aware of its current situation.
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