THE DISASTER OF INTERNATIONAL FOREIGN AID PROGRAMS
by Ken Schoolland

[Ken Schoolland is the author of the George Washington Honor Medal-winning book The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey. A professor of economics and political science at Hawaii Pacific University, he was formerly a US International Trade Commission economist and a special advisor to the White House. This pamphlet was originally published in 1988 and revised in May 1998. It is part of ISIL's educational pamphlet series.]

Feast and Famine: An Age of Irony

Conscience money, popularly known as "foreign aid", cannot undo the harm that is done to developing countries by the trade and agricultural policies of industrial nations. While millions of people are starving across Africa, it is not uncommon to read about tons of food being stored or destroyed in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. These reports seem as if they were coming from different planets: an impoverished Third World suffers while a prosperous First World disposes of surplus food.

The food being destroyed is not just the accumulated discard from schoolchildren's lunch plates. Instead, the great destruction of food is the result of an official agricultural program to keep food off the domestic market in order to raise farm prices.

Planned Waste

Not long ago, Japanese officials announced plans to destroy 8,600 tons of cabbages and radishes because their prices slumped below "acceptable" levels. West European officials are reported to have socked away mountains of butter and lakes of milk for the same reason. And US officials ordered 3.5 billion oranges, two-fifths of all production, to be removed from the California market in order to raise prices.

One farmer in California, Carl Pescosolido, faced hefty fines because he chose to give two million oranges to the poor people of San Francisco rather than let them rot in the field. The authorities do not always look kindly on charity, unless it fits their own assistance plans. Emergency assistance in the form of famine relief grabs the headlines, but these paltry sums are dwarfed by the massive government programs that created the conditions of poverty in the first place.

Nearly $100 billion is spent annually by governments to subsidize farmers in the developed countries. Over the long run, these massive subsidies to First World farmers have had a deleterious effect on the ability of Third World nations to develop a sound agricultural base and to become economically self-sufficient. This occurs in two important ways.

Ban Trade - Give Aid

In order to maintain high domestic food prices, First World nations usually use one, or both of these techniques:

Prohibit the importation of many agricultural products from the developing countries and/or

Dump crops abroad under the guise of "foreign aid."

Such policies serve to obstruct or ruin farm investment and production where it is needed most. It is no accident that, while First World nations restrict access to their markets, they like to boast of helping their desperate neighbors with generous shipments of aid. The Japanese government will herald its new ties with Southeast Asia by offering economic assistance, but will curtail the importation of rice and boneless chicken. The US government will fortify its Caribbean allies with military and economic aid, but will restrict the importation of sugar and tomatoes. And Western European governments will offer similar policies to their former colonies in Africa.

This apparently inconsistent behavior, banning trade while giving aid, is frequently part of the same agricultural policy. Politicians, especially in the US and the European Union, are always in the awkward position of having to dispose of vast quantities of "surplus" food that their domestic subsidies have generated. This must be done with finesse so that these "surpluses", or subsidy crops, won't reach the domestic consumer and reduce local food prices. Thus Americans and Europeans must pay five to seven times as much for sugar as they would have to pay on the world market. And the Japanese must buy domestic rice at five to seven times the price of rice which is produced by farmers in Thailand. Since the Third World nations are prevented from selling these products to the First World, they are not able to earn much of the foreign exchange which is necessary to repay development loans or to purchase vital fertilizers, tractors, petroleum, and education. As the opportunities for self-generated earnings are diminished, developing nations remain eternally dependent on their benefactors.

The Making of Subsidy Crops

In America, this agricultural policy began in 1929. Under the Farm Stabilization Act, the Hoover administration first bought up and stored 257 million bushels of wheat in order to please the farm bloc.

During the Great Depression, while the hungry and unemployed were lining up at soup kitchens, the Roosevelt administration tried to save on storage costs by paying farmers to plant fewer crops, to plow under millions of acres of cotton, and slaughter several million pigs and cows. It has been an expanding bipartisan boondoggle ever since. In 1983, US government subsidies nearly equaled the total of net farm income. In 1984, the US government succeeded in removing 82 million acres of prime land from cultivation. This idled 36% of the land devoted to corn, wheat, cotton, sorghum, and rice. Still, new subsidies always brought on new surpluses. While the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) was holding land and commodities off the market, various branches of government were simultaneously increasing farm yield and opening virgin territories to even more subsidized farming.

With truckloads of pesticides and fertilizers at hand, the USDA conducted research and training programs to help farmers increase their crop yields. The Farmers Home Administration (FHA) provided low-interest loans, and the US Congress underwrote the construction of mammoth pork-barrel irrigation projects in the desert. Disaster insurance even encouraged farming in drought-prone and flood-prone areas.

So the embarrassing surpluses continued to mount. There was, however, one last option for the disposal of subsidy crops. What couldn't be stored or destroyed could be sent abroad.

What Helps Farmers At Home Can Hurt Farmers Abroad

The Food for Peace program was established in the 1950s to get rid of unwanted farm surpluses, to build new markets for American products, and to reward favored Third World regimes. With a bizarre twist, this "food for peace" even included millions of dollars worth of tobacco! Logic suggests that if American farmers benefit when the US government purchases their crop; then small, marginal farmers in developing countries can be devastated when those crops are unloaded on Third World markets. In a report from the British magazine The Economist (February 2, 1985), "This dumping has allowed shortsighted local governments to keep the price of foodstuffs for the urban proletariat so cheap that native farmers are ruined, and dependence on imported foods become a drag on development."

Farmers in many Third World nations don't always have the clout that farmers have in developed nations. Many repressive Third World regimes, along with some international bureaucracies and political lobbies, owe their continued existence more to aid programs than to indigenous popular support.

Autocratic rulers can more easily hold on to the reins of power when there is abundance of wealth to distribute among corrupt power brokers. In this sense, foreign aid is more likely to retard development. Over the decades of Eastern and Western programs, Ethiopia has virtually become a textbook case.

It is simply not enough to measure a nation's concern for the poor, as many analysts are prone to do, by examining the annual increase in foreign aid. As economist Thomas Sowell reveals in his book The Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective, Tanzania has received more foreign aid per capita than any other nation, yet its output per worker has declined 50% over the period of a decade and it has turned from an exporter of corn to an importer. In fact, food production all across Africa has been declining in the past decade despite continued aid programs.

Matching Practice with Ideals

Japan, Western Europe, and the United States have more to offer the world than restrictive trade barriers and the persistent custom of protecting the domestic farm at all costs. As a lesson from their own history, the First World nations know that an export potential is crucial to developing economies. They could foster greater investment and growth in the Third World by simply living up to their frequently-espoused ideals of free trade.

The citizens of the First World nations should be proud to be able to feed the impoverished Third World, and much of the formerly communist Second World, but they must recognize that this abundance is not due to the competitive strength of the agricultural sector as much as it is due to those businesses, workers, customers, and taxpayers who must shoulder the burden of subsidies and high prices. This represents a tremendous misallocation of resources and lost productivity for both the developed and the undeveloped nations. The poor in all nations, First and Third, suffer as a result.

It is time that the United States, Western Europe and Japan set a better, more consistent model for the Third World to emulate.

CAR-NAMA*
By Masood Hasan

[The writer is a Lahore-based columnist and a well-known journalist.]

There was a time when stories about obtaining a telephone were regarded as a twisted joke in which the losers were the people. Their only fault was that they wanted a phone connection but that was more or less like asking for the moon. Jokes about one generation applying for a phone and the next running around with their slips were common. There was even one about the old man on his death bed croaking to his gathered family to pursue the dream and one day obtain a telephone. With his last gasp he would pass on a rumpled piece of paper to his eldest son, that great receipt that the T&T (Telephone and Telegraph) Department issued to hopefuls in those days. Even a phone sanctioned, then required months of trail blazing work to convert the sanction into a phone set that actually worked. Line faults were feared by all alike because it took weeks, months and sometimes years to have a number fixed. Sounds like macabre fiction but it wasn’t too long ago. Now it seems the phone sets have had a reincarnation and returned to haunt the people in the shape of cars.

It is a shame that the President has been pushed to a position where he has issued an ultimatum to the car industry to get in line or get ready for some overhauling. The Prime Minister has been inducted in as well, which will add weight to the government’s argument. The Minister for Commerce & Industries has been forced to constitute a task force which has been given about four weeks to address a long list of objectives. You would think a national calamity was upon us or the Indians had opened fire on our country. What is all the fuss about? The bane of everyone’s life who wish (and have the means) to acquire a new car. There aren’t many in that list since 40% of the country is hoping to see a tap installed in their village that produces that miracle liquid called water. Buying a car is not quite a priority here. The newspapers have now called the on-going farce about car prices and the fleecing of the people both by the manufacturers and the middlemen a ‘scam’ and even the comatose Islamabad has had an epileptic fit.

The fact is that buying a new car — and it doesn’t really matter which one, means paying top money for goods which really don’t measure up to the price tag they carry. Those of us who have had the opportunity to visit other countries know well that for a trifle of what you pay here, you get an infinitely superior vehicle elsewhere. Government duties and excessive taxation however have prevented those cars from entering the market here but while all this has been going on and the local car assembling empires have been set up, at the end of the day, the consumer is still at the receiving end. It is the familiar story that industries have spun again and again, using protection for their investment and ‘sacrifices’ to ensure high returns and large profits. In the case of the car business, the terms on which customers are forced to act amount to daylight robbery. Having deposited full amounts for the vehicle — the deposits, which are then parked for months and earn huge dividends, they are left with no choice but to while away the months, seeking connections to those who work in the car industry to get a few notches up on the ladder of hopefuls. The other choice is of course to walk into any showroom where any amount of brand new cars are displayed, pay the extorted premium and drive away in the car of your dreams — which of course it is not. The equation is disgusting. Firstly you pay a vulgar amount of money for a car which is not worth that money by any stretch of the imagination, then you pay a premium and in some cases this is as much as Rs 200,000 — 25% of the car price and should you wish to have a color of your choice, you may end up paying even more.

The question that people have been asking for years is why there should be a long waiting line when the same cars are falling out of hundreds of showrooms in the country — the showrooms that you can see. We all know there are the godowns where more goodies are parked for more fleecing. The government’s directive on a minimum 6 month holding period for a new car before making a sale has been treated with contempt by the car dealers who have exploited those whose only sin is wanting a car. It is baffling to understand how the car industry — all men with powerful connections and the government are unable to check this criminal profiteering that has flourished for years. But then, I suppose, it is not baffling at all. Such things don’t happen on their own and laws cannot be broken or principles compromised and twisted without patronage of one kind or another.

Then there is the question of what you actually get at the end of it all. Most cars seem to be made of thin tissue paper. You lean on one and it gives way. Look at any workshop and see some of Pakistan’s pride and joy performers and you wonder what materials are used. A bump can send most bumpers falling and a minor collision leaves cars looking like something the cat brought in. New cars creak almost as soon as you have driven off. Customers who return with anguished enquiries are sent off with a two-word soother; locally assembled, as if that is a quality that imported vehicles don’t possess. The interiors are patchy and cheap plastic parts abound. In most cars, the seats are fairly close to the broken benches you see in the shabby district courts. As for the engines and the technology that fetch premium rupees, the less said the better. What more can one add other than to say that the leading car maker has been selling the same with an engine that the principals launched 20 years back and upgraded many times over, while here we continued to enjoy the ‘new’ technology?

Volkswagen were once fined heavily for advertising claims that were not quite true. Here, with no proper authority that can check and verify the tall claims that lure more victims to buy second-rate products at inflated prices, it is open season on the customers who have the choice to pay top money or simply live with what they have. Efforts to import reconditioned cars have been stoutly resisted by the manufacturers. When these were coming in, the people saw the difference. Even with the mandatory fleecing of the middlemen, for the end users it was a good deal. A used car was infinitely preferable to the junk that was rolling out. But the traditional Paki greed and the bleating of the car industry took care of that threat. Since then it’s been great going for them, but bad news for the users.

Without fully knowing what WTO means to them, many car hopefuls are hoping they will at last get a good deal from the market. The government’s threat to import 10,000 cars as a one-off might work but the task force that’s been given the job of recommending measures to fix things will soon understand that if there is no executive enforcement, loud and strong, the vested interests will prevail once again and the stables will continue to stink. * Literally, it means a feat but it may also mean car-journal. [Courtesy: The News Lahore]

Letters to FreePakistan

Thank you for an informative letter. I much appreciate your consideration. I particularly enjoyed the screen saver by "Philosophy of Liberty" by Lux Lucre and Ken Schoolland. A simple yet excellent example of what liberty is about. I have shown this screen saver to several of my friends at work. Government is not about control of people, it’s about protecting their rights.

Thanks for putting it so clearly.
Steven Tennett

My name is Steven Tennett. I am a Computer Manager from Harare, Zimbabwe. Part time I am a philosopher and writer. I would be delighted if you could make use of my letter in your next newsletter!

Best regards,
Steve

Letters from the Press

WHY CARS SELL COSTLIER IN PAKISTAN
[S. M. ARIF, Karachi]

A serious discussion has been going on in these columns for some time regarding car prices in the local market. There are four ponints of view to be discussed about this issue: auto prices, quality, availability and variety. Sadly enough, the ground realitites do not depict a rosy picture; the prices are high, the quality is low, the availability is averaging six months and the variety is hardly 10-12 different models.

Manufactureres of all kinds of automobiles are doing business in Dubai, UAE, which is the nearest international destination. Wide variety of models are available readily. A new fully loaded Civic car is for 40,000 dhs (Rs640, 000), Corolla for 35,000 dhs (Rs560,000), City for 28,000 dhs (448,000), Camry 55,000 dhs (Rs880,000), Accord 60,000 dhs (Rs960,000), Mercedes 88,000 dhs (Rs1,408,000). Besides, there are over 150 car models to choose from all over the world.

Where and what went wrong in Pakistan? The CKD unit imported from Japan has 30 per cent import duty, six per cent withholding tax and, on top of it, 15 per cent sales tax. And when the car comes in market, it has 15 per cent tax on the total cost of the car. So, it is more than 50 per cent that the government is getting on each car.

If for instance the government does away with these duties and taxes, the cost of the car will be reduced by 50 per cent. Also the WTO's free trade agreement is going to be enforced from Jan 1, 2005. So, the government should take measures so that there will be a win-win situation for both customers and car manufacturers. It should reduce these duties to half, and should open import market by allowing only new cars.

There is no such thing as reconditioned cars. These are all used cars which have already lived their lives in Japan. So, once the government reduces the duties, locally produced Civic and Corolla, for instance, will be available for Rs750, 000 while imported ones for Rs1, 000,000.
[Dawn, Karachi]

CAR BOOKING
[Iqbal M. Nazar, Karachi]

A few months back, Toyota announced an “improved” booking procedure for its extremely popular Corolla model. Unfortunately, the way it has been implemented, only the black marketers can get a car.

According to the procedure, a person pays Rs.100, 000.00 to enter a monthly ballot. If he is successful, he has to pay the balance after two months and get the car after another three months. In the wait is six months.

If he is unsuccessful, he can take his money back or let it remain for the next ballot. However, surprisingly, no weightage is given to the fact that a person participated in earlier ballots. The chances of a customer are not improved, no matter how long the customer participates as every time he is treated as a new entrant. In this way, he may not get a car even after hundred ballots.

In the previous system, a customer booking a car was assured of it after four to five months. All this has created a booming black market. A car dealer who invests Rupee one million for a car can book ten cars. He gets three as his chances are now 300% better. He can dispose them at “on” money of Rs.150, 000.00 per car, whereas a user cannot do it easily.

The manufacturers should examine its booking procedure and make it realistic. After say three ballots, the customer should be exempt from further ones and a car be allotted to him.
[Business Recorder Lahore]

BAN ON CHINESE CARS?
[Major (R) M Asif Raja, Rawalpindi]

Can anybody on behalf of government give any justification for roll back of low priced Chinese cars introduction or should we accept or consider it another step for the protection of local industry at the cost of consumer? [The News Lahore]

GROSSLY UNFAIR
[Prof Nilofer Sultana, Rawalpindi]

The television viewers are bound to listen to the President’s speech as it is on every channel, Geo, ARY and PTV at the cost of regular programmes. In other words the viewers do not have the freedom of choice. They have to listen to the hour-long speech or switch off their TVs. This is not fair. The highlights of the speech are repeated in the ‘Khabarnama’ and the newspapers provide the details the following day. Why deprive the viewers of the only source of entertainment. There would be many who would love to listen to every word of this speech and for them only one channel would suffice.
[The News Lahore]

EXERCISING A CHOICE
[L Khan, Peshawar]

When civil society succumbs to anarchist forces because suddenly the bigots feel societal morality is challenged, it is not morals that worry the bigots, but the importance they feel at flouting the rule of law. Cable TV is no threat to society, whether Indian, nor is any other channel a threat. It is a bureaucrat who wants to milk the cow with zealots unwittingly doing what suits civil servants at PEMRA.

Propaganda if it threatens can easily be stopped and PEMRA and cable operators are as much patriotic as others and can easily stop undesirable transmissions. Information in this age can never be stopped, but is always manipulated. The best guard is by our own effective free press. Let us not lose that which defines free society — a free press — and let people exercise choice for that is why humans have the most developed mind. Those who do not watch cable cannot be forced to do so but, those that want to, should not fall prey to a bureaucrat’s insecurities; for gradually they are losing importance if cannot interfere with society.
[The News Lahore]

POLICE BARRICADES
[Mohammad Zahid Khan, Islamabad]

The job of traffic police is to check vehicle’s papers and to see if traffic signals are followed or not. Another very important duty is also to ensure free flow of traffic without any let or hindrance, but in our country it erects barricades and barriers, which hinders the free flow and creates bottlenecks.

In my view these barricades should be placed only when some untoward incident had happened and the culprit had to be nabbed, otherwise the roads should be kept free for smooth flow of traffic.

Hopefully, the high ups of this department will ponder over the issue for just consideration.
[The News Lahore]

PRIVATIZE TRAFFIC SYSTEM
[Shakir H Shamim, Islamabad]

The wave of privatization is spreading all over the world due to fiscal requirement and better services. The traffic system prevailing in Pakistan also has certain problems. A system for the regulation and collection of fine is owned by the public sector. The entire system needs to be reviewed keeping in view fruitful results of privatization and to get rid of the old colonial system which has given birth to corruption in various tiers of the system. It will help to have a transparent system and ensure collection of targeted amount.
[The News Lahore]

PRIVATIZE JUDICIARY
[Dr Hamid Naeem Khattak, Attock]

The issue raised by Engr Zahur Ali Qureshi in his letter "Justice on vacation" published in Newpost September 13, 2003 is very pertinent and thought provoking. I think the only way to ensure speedy, effective, and quick, round the clock justice to the needy is to privatise judiciary. Besides its prompt availability it will also become cost effective. I would wish to ask all the jurists whether this is possible or is it a funny, ridiculous thought.
[The News Lahore]

CONTEMPT OF COURT
[Barrister Bacha, Peshawar]

No contempt is committed of a court which is contemptible; no contempt can be committed of a court which is not contemptible. [The News Lahore]

STOCK EXCHANGE LOSS
[SMF Hasan, Lahore]

The bloated stock exchange, the show-piece of macro-economy, designed by the experts from USA, has started leaking heavily entailing loss of billions to the investors. These experts will certainly shed crocodile tears on this catastrophe. But the losers deserve neither sympathy nor solace because they had been repeatedly warned not to enter the gambling den. They jumped knowingly and wittingly into the black hole, driven by greed and avarice. The government institutions will again try to prop up the prices by artificial means. But a stock exchange, not supported by industrial development, is just like a corpse standing on brittle crutches.

For a stable and sound stock exchange, it is a prerequisite that all surplus money should be diverted towards massive industrialisation by offering extensive attractions to entrepreneurs, like import of machinery without duty, substantial cut in the prices of inputs controlled by the government, exemption from taxes for a fixed period and facilitating exports of their products, so that new industry is established at a large scale, offering gainful employment to millions, enhancing the purchasing power of the people and increasing their demand for goods and services. The national economy can never flourish unless it gains confidence, support, and assistance from the people within the country and ceases to rely on foreign factors and agencies.

Another apprehension, looming large, is that, like the stock exchanges, the oft-trumpeted foreign reserve, may also wither away if it continues to depend on fortuitous circumstances and migratory dollars. This bubble may burst as soon as, with any political change, the present economic managers have to leave this country to rejoin their regular jobs.
[The News Lahore]

TAX WITCH-HUNT
[Nasrullah Khan Shinwari, Peshawar]

This refers to the letter captioned ‘Tax witch-hunt’ by Mr Shakeel Akhtar, published in The News on August 28, 2003. He has very rightly suggested that only the taxable income and assets should be advertised for guidance of the taxpayers, and a simplified version of the IT returns be designed accordingly instead of the complex IT return forms, with a lot of superfluous information beyond the comprehension of most taxpayers.

Will the Chief Justice of Pakistan or the Tax Ombudsman be kind enough, to take sue motto notice of this trouble faced by law-abiding citizens due to the introduction of the complex IT return forms, which even a small percentage of literate taxpayers find difficult to comprehend and fill to the satisfaction of the IT officials, not to speak of millions of illiterate and semi-literate. A suitable remedy is required to provide relief to the common citizens who do not have any strong organisation for the traders to protect them.
[The News Lahore]

LET THE POOR CRY
[Mohammad Fayyaz, Charsadda]

Minister for Information Technology has lauded PTCL for improving its performance and increasing its revenues to the tune of Rs 4 billion. Well-done Mr Minister! Advise the PTCL to continue sending over inflated bills by including imaginary local calls to the subscribers with a big line rent. They will earn the double of Rs 4 billion as profit in future. And if any concession is possible, grant it to the elites. The common poor subscriber, let him cry and weep, it is his fate here in this country of the pure.
[The News Lahore]

FreePakistan News-Briefs

IN THE NAME OF PEOPLE!
When in early 80s the wave of NATIONALIZATION swept over Pakistan, it was IN THE NAME OF PEOPLE. Now an ad of Privatization Commission, Government of Pakistan, which aims at selling the shares of a state enterprise, appears under the slogan: PRIVATIZATION FOR THE PEOPLE.

RECONDITIONED CARS NOT TO BE IMPORTED
Federal Production and Industries Minister has assured two former presidents of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry that import of reconditioned cars will not be allowed in Pakistan at the cost of local industry.

FASHION SHOWS BANNED
The Prime Minister has restricted hotel managements and organizers not to hold fashion shows which are not in consonance with Islamic and cultural norms of decency.

PETITIONER ASKED TO DEFINE VULGARITY
In a report submitted to the Lahore High Court, the Central Board of Film Censors has asked a petitioner to define vulgarity and mention the names of the movies which contain this element.

LAHORE HIGH COURT RAPS GOV LAWYERS
A division bench of Lahore High Court has observed that government lawyers file unnecessary appeals and waste not only court’s time but national exchequer also.

TAX EXEMPTION FOR TOP GENERALS
The finance minister has told the national assembly that top military generals like corps commanders, chief of staff of Pakistan Armed Forces and provincial governors were exempted from income tax on their sumptuary allowances during General Pervez Musharraf’s regime.

BANKS TO REPORT REMITTANCES
The State Bank of Pakistan has directed the commercial banks to report all ‘suspicious inward and outward remittances’ worth Rs.0.5 million or above.

KILLING OF FOUR PERSONS BY POLICE CONDEMNED
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has condemned killing of four persons by police in Donga Bonga, Bahawalpur, terming it use of ruthless force by the police. According to a HRCP press release, the incident once again confirmed that the authorities had no respect for the citizens, and that the people attempting to draw the attention to their concerns had to face batons, tear gas canisters and bullets, and this Donga Bonga incident was no exception to this phenomenon. It has demanded an impartial inquiry into the killings.

MORE TAX PAYERS NEEDED
Central Board of Revenue plans to add three hundred thousand new tax payers during the current fiscal year. For this purpose offices in small areas have been established to expand the tax base.

ELECTRICITY PRICES NEED TO BE LOWERED DOWN
Pakistan Industrial and Traders Association Front have welcomed the demand of national assembly members to lower down the prices of electricity.

FARMERS DECRY GST ON TUBE WELLS
The farmers have decried the 15% General Sales Tax imposed by the federal government on tube well engines (and all spare parts of tube well engines) resulting in price increase ranging from Rs.3000 to 12000.

MISUSE OF EXIT CONTROL LIST CONDEMNED
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has condemned misuse of the exit control list as a tool of harassment.

KITE FLYING BAN EXTENDED
Lahore City district administrator has extended the ban on kite flying to another 60 days.

STATE BANK RINGS POVERTY ALARM
The State Bank of Pakistan rung an alarm-bell on poverty and demanded the government and the private sector to create as many jobs as possible to arrest burgeoning poverty which rose from 20% to 33% in the last 15 years.

GOV URGED TO WITHDRAW REDUCTION IN IMPORT DUTY
Chairman of Pakistan Crop Protection Association has urged the government to encourage local formulation of pesticides and give special incentives and subsidies to local investors in pesticides sectors. Moreover, he has demanded of the government to withdraw the recent reduction in the import duty on pesticides from 25% to 5%.

CRACKDOWN ON PALMISTS, MAGICIANS AND QUACKS
Lahore city district government has decided to start crackdown against palmists, magicians and quacks. The special teams comprising Drug Inspectors and public representatives would conduct raids on the offices and clinics of palmists, magicians and quacks and if they are found involved in illegal activities, their record will be seized and action will be taken against them.

5326 COPS PUNISHED IN 8 MONTHS
Lahore city police awarded punishment to 5326 police officials from inspectors to constables from January 1 to August 15, 2003, for negligence, corruption and misconduct.

AN NGO’S EXPLOITS
The Noor Pakistan, a non-governmental organization, has expressed its concern over the environment and health problems facing the residents of Nasir Colony and College Road (Lahore) due to the establishment of a fiber glass factory there. It has demanded the authorities to take necessary measures for shifting the factory.