Employment generation in flood hit areas of Punjab’s Muzafargarh and Rajanpur to help rural people

Rome, 30 September 2011 – One year after devastating floods washed away thousands of farmers’ fields, and on the heels of the most recent flooding in Pakistan, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has announced a US$40.2 million loan to the country to support rural areas.

The loan agreement for the Southern Punjab Poverty Alleviation Project was signed today in Rome by Tasnim Aslam, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to Italy, and Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of IFAD.

Pakistan has suffered severe floods in the past two years, with the latest deluge affecting 8 million people. Commenting on the situation of smallholder farmers affected by floods in the country, Rabayel Memon, policy advisor at the Organization for Social Development Initiatives (OSDI), said: “People living in the areas hit by floods depend on agriculture for their livelihood. It is estimated that half a million smallholder farmers have been directly affected and their crops washed away, and have fallen deeper into a debt trap.”

The worst-affected areas in the Sindh province are Badin, Tando Mohammend Khan and Mirpur Khas according to Aassim Siddiqui, founder trustee of the OSDI, who is participating in the 2nd Global AgriKnowledge ShareFair being held at IFAD headquarters in Rome.

Siddiqui said it is heartening to see that IFAD is moving ahead with its agricultural and rural development programmes in the country. The new loan agreement targets some of the areas affected by floods where smallholder farmers will benefit from the projects’ plans to offer alternative off-farm employment opportunities.

Southern Punjab is located within Pakistan’s cotton and wheat zone, and has been largely neglected by development assistance. The region lacks many fundamental elements of infrastructure and the skewed land distribution leaves many vulnerable, particularly women, who have to compete for the few wage-labour positions available for the landless. Recent poverty analysis has revealed that the incidence of poverty in this region is among the highest in Pakistan.

The project will be implemented in the districts of Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar, Muzafargarh and Rajanpur, where there are over 1.2 million rural households. Landless casual labourers, smallholder farmers and woman-headed households will participate in the project. It will reach more than 80,000 households among which 26,500 will benefit from productivity enhancement initiatives, such as technology transfer activities. The project aims to reverse the current land distribution by providing more than 20,000 women with livestock or small land plots. In addition, IFAD will offer alternative off-farm employment opportunities for 14,000 men and women through vocational and entrepreneurship training.

With this new project, IFAD will have financed 24 programmes and projects in Pakistan for a total investment of $481.1 million.

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Press release No.: IFAD/65/2011

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) works with poor rural people to enable them to grow and sell more food, increase their incomes and determine the direction of their own lives. Since 1978, IFAD has invested about US$13.2 billion in grants and low-interest loans to developing countries through projects empowering about 400 million people to break out of poverty, thereby helping to create vibrant rural communities. IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized UN agency based in Rome – the United Nation’s food and agricultural hub. It is a unique partnership of 166 members from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), other developing countries and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)