The document discusses major challenges facing Pakistan's rapid urbanization, including poor housing quality and affordability, water and sanitation issues, lack of public transportation systems, and declining enrollment in public schools. It notes that while cities have higher standards of living, services are struggling to keep up with population growth. Solutions will require coordinated efforts across government, organizations, and other stakeholders.

1. MEDIA AND CURRENT AFFAIR
Msc Mass Communication
First semester Morning
Represented To:
Mr. MUHAMMAD KASHIF
Submitted by:
Syeda Nabeela Fatima
Date : 27/4/2020

2. What major challenges are faced by our
country in different fields
Challenges facing Pakistan’s urban future
Pakistan is among the most urbanized countries of South Asia. As challenges mount,
urban planning is gradually finding space in the policy discourse. This is the first of
three blog posts on Pakistan’s rapid urbanization. It discusses the pace of
urbanization and the major problems associated with it. This will be followed by posts
on how the government is responding to the challenges and how and whether the
research community is engaged in seeking solutions.

3. Major challenges are faced by our country
in different fields
With an urban population growing three percent per year, Pakistanis are flocking to
cities faster than any other country in South Asia. By 2030, more than half of Pakistan’s
projected 250 million citizens are expected to live in cities. The main drivers of
Pakistan’s urban growth are high birth rates and migration from rural areas. Migrants
are attracted to cities for better jobs and improved access to basic services.
However, urbanization has inflated Pakistan’s biggest cities so rapidly that they
struggle to deliver public services and create productive jobs. Urban poverty is on the
rise, with one in eight urban dwellers living below the poverty line.

4. Major challenges are faced by our country in
different fields
According to the World Bank, Pakistan’s
urbanization is also ‘messy and hidden’:

5. Major challenges are faced by our country in
different fields
1. Poor housing quality and affordability
The State Bank of Pakistan has estimated that across all major cities, urban housing
was approximately 4.4 million units short of demand in 2015. If current trends
continue, Pakistan’s five largest cities will account for 78 percent of the total housing
shortage by 2035. Even if urban population remains stagnant, the growing trend of
nuclear families who seek housing separate from larger families will increase pressure
on housing supply

6. Major challenges are faced by our country
in different fields
2. Water and Sanitation
In most Pakistani cities, water is supplied only four to 16 hours per day and to only 50
percent of the population. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), 90
percent of water supply schemes are unsafe for drinking. Shared latrines among
households are common in cities and access to solid waste management services
remains low. In the most population-dense areas of Karachi, one toilet is shared
between twenty people. The World Bank estimates that poor sanitation costs
Pakistan around 3.9 percent of GDP; diarrhea-related death and disease among
children under five being the largest contributors.

7. Major challenges are faced by our country
in different fields
Local government: Productivity, efficiency, and governance
Local government must also operate within this constrained economic environment.
The challenge for local authorities is to balance demand for sustained first-world levels
of service with affordability. To do this, local authorities are looking at their modes of
service delivery and assessing what influences their costs. This includes seeking
productivity and efficiency gains through shared services, such as the proposed Local
Government Funding Agency, as well as smaller localised initiatives.
Auckland is recognised as being important to New Zealand's economic development,
and there is much for the Government and the new Auckland Council to do to help
Auckland achieve its potential and its contribution to the national economy.

8. Major challenges are faced by our country
in different fields
Raise awareness of risks that can arise from change and
how to manage them
We plan to focus on work that supports awareness of the risks that might undermine
efficiency initiatives and adversely affect service results, and to provide assurance that
key risks are being managed. We want to understand the effects of the Government's
change and improvement programme on the capability and capacity of public entities.
This will include understanding whether the change initiatives are being well governed
and managed, so that entities deliver effective and efficient services during the
medium term.

9. Major challenges are faced by our country
in different fields
Encourage better use of information to support good
decision-making
One of the keys to meeting the challenge of delivering effective and efficient public
services in a fiscally constrained environment is to get better information about
performance and then use that information to make better decisions and hold people
accountable. Using good performance information underpins many of the initiatives
under way to raise State sector performance. It is important that service performance
information is useful and used, and that there are significant benefits for agencies,
Ministers, and Parliament in making this a reality. As public entities look for ways to
cut costs, it is more important than ever that they have the information necessary to
inform those decisions.

10. Major challenges are faced by our country
in different fields
Provide insight into local government
The amalgamation of eight local authorities into one council in Auckland on 1
November 2010 was a complex exercise with implications for the whole country and
local government in particular. We have made good progress on our audit approach to
the local government reform in Auckland. We will build on this in 2011/12, including
formalising the changes that follow the reform and embedding the changed practices
in decision-making and service delivery. We plan to review those changes through our
annual audit work and report our findings to Parliament.

11. Major challenges are faced by our country
in different fields
Humanity is facing major global challenges that are transational in nature and
transnational in nature and transinstitutional in solution. This essay confronts fifteen of
the biggest issues, including how to achieve sustainable development, guarantee
access to clean drinking water, foster ethical market economies and fight new as well
as re-emerging diseases. While the panorama may appear pessimistic, humanity is
winning more than losing – even if where we are losing is very serious. But these
challenges cannot be addressed by any single government or institution acting alone.
They require collaborative actions among governments, international organizations,
universities, NGOs and creative individual. We need a serious focus on green growth,
falling water tables, rising food/water/energy prices, population growth, resource
depletion, climte change, terrorism, and changing disease patterns, otherwise the
results may well be catastrophic.

12. Major challenges are faced by our country
in different fields
Where are we winning
Increasing access to water
Increasing literacy rates
Extending life expectancy at birth
Reducing poverty (living on $1.25 a day)
Reducing infant mortality
Reducing war
Reducing HIV prevalence

13. Major challenges are faced by our country
in different fields
Where are we losing
Increasing total debt
Increasing unemployment
Increasing income inequality
Increasing the human ecological footprint/reducing biocapacity ratio

14. Major challenges are faced by our country
in different fields
Where is there either no significant change or change is not clear
Corruption
Freedom rights
Electricity from renewables compared to non-renewables
Forest lands
R&D expenditures
Physicians per capita

15. Major challenges are faced by our country in
different fields
The 2012 SOFI in Figure 1 (Ibid.) shows that the ten-year future for the world is
getting better — but at a slower rate of improvement than over the past twenty years.

16. Major challenges are faced by our country in
different fields
EVOLUTION OF THE 15 GLOBAL CHALLENGES
1-These global issues identified by the Delphi surveys and interviews in 1996–1997 were:
2-World population is growing; food, water, education, housing, and medical care must grow
apace.
3-Fresh water is becoming scarce in localized areas of the world.
4-The gap in living standards between the rich and poor promises to become more extreme and
divisive.
5-The threat of new and re-emerging diseases and immune micro-organisms is growing.
6-Capacity to decide is diminishing (as issues become more global and complex under
conditions of increasing uncertainty and risk).
7-Terrorism is increasingly destructive, proliferating, and difficult to prevent.

17. Major challenges are faced by our country in
different fields
Transportation
Karachi is the only megacity in the world without a mass public transport system.
Meanwhile, the cost of private transportation is estimated to have increased by over
100 percent since 2000. Those who cannot afford the commute are forced to live in
unplanned, inner-city neighborhoods.
Increased private transport on urban roads has caused severe congestion. The
government has responded by upgrading many urban roads. However, infrastructure
for the most common modes of travel in Pakistan – such as pavements for walking or
special lanes for bicycles – either does not exist or has been encroached upon. This is
despite the fact that 40 percent of all trips in Lahore are made on foot.

18. Major challenges are faced by our country in
different fields
Education
Although urban areas have higher student enrollment and better learning outcomes,
close to 10 percent of all children in Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar remain out of
school.
Like healthcare, better education in cities is explained by the private sector. From 2001
to 2014, the share of primary enrollment in urban private schools rose from 25
percent to 40 percent.
Moreover, there seems to be an inverse relationship between public schooling and
city size. In small cities, approximately 35 percent of all children aged five to nine are
enrolled in government schools. In capital cities, that figure drops to 22 percent.

19. Major challenges are faced by our country in
different fields
Provide good analysis and reporting of information about
the transport sector
We have large amounts of data and knowledge that we can use much better to inform
our audit work and to share with others. We plan to get the best from what we know
and improve our understanding and reporting. In February 2011, we started an
initiative to improve the way we share knowledge within our own organisation. This
initiative consolidates and expands on our previous work, which focused on helping us
to better understand and use our knowledge about individual public entities, various
sectors, and the public sector as a whole. This new initiative will extend our ability to
be flexible, agile, and adaptive. We will work on two pilot projects in 2011/12, in the
transport and tertiary education sectors, focusing on better analysis and reporting of
sector information. The transport sector pilot is already under way.