ISLAMABAD September 7, 2006: To commemorate the IFI Action week, ActionAid Pakistan organized a seminar titled "Pakistan- Bearing the Burden of IMF and World Bank Policies". While speaking at the occasion, Country Director of ActionAid Pakistan Dr. Rubina Saigol said that we, the people of Pakistan are the worst victim of the policies and practices of these International Financial Institutions (IFIs) which have resulted in extreme poverty and inequality as the largest source of development finance in the world, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have enormous impact on the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, especially in the poorest, developing and transitional countries.

They have been providing finance for the projects designed for improvement in essential services such as education, health, water, and sanitation or mega development project in the area of  infrastructure development that have strong bearing on the lives of millions. Six decades gone by since their founding back in the 1940's, the governance structure of these institutions has stagnated. The policies of these institutions are lopsided and the process of the decision making highly secretive. Neither have these institutions a democratic dispensation nor a vision emanating from wisdom for collective good as evolving in the contemporary world.

Dr. Ahmed Nawaz Hakro, teaching at Quaid-e-Azam University Economics Department while speaking at the occasion said that, these International Financial Institutions through a very complex process take over the economies of the third world countries. They have weakened the role of the state and through the loan conditionalities they have added into the adversaries of the poor countries.

Dr. Aly Ercelawn while talking about Privatization, which is triggered by the IFI's conditionalities, said that the worst affectees of privatization are the laborers. He said that because of privatization and growing strength of so called free market the state is no more safeguarding labor rights. They have dismantled the labor unions through new laws and in order to attract the investors they have made these laws like IRO. While talking about the solution or an alternative to this problem he said that we should strengthen the labor unions and should formulate labor unions of each sector at the national level. He further said that the national labor unions should then be connected to at-least South Asia level so that a collective effort to stop extreme violation of labor rights could be made.

Khadim Hussain from ActionAid said on this occasion that these IFIs have initiated new form of Structural Adjustment Programs with new labels but they are pursuing the same functions.

The Left Bank Outfall Drain Project which has affected 3 district of Sindh was discussed. While talking about this experience the locals of the area, Khadim Talpur, Wajid Leghari and Abu Bakar Sheikh revealed that after the completion of this project 2.4 million acre land has been destroyed, this huge land is either occupied by sea or land salinity has destroyed the otherwise fertile land. They demanded that instead of giving loan to remodel this project, the World Bank should spend it to help the people of the area which are affected by the LBOD, World Bank funded project. Mustafa Talpur while throwing light on the initiatives taken by ActionAid in order to challenge World Bank said that upon our protests and letters to the World Bank officials they sent a monitoring mission but it was of no help. He further said that world bank should not take back the loan it provided for the project but should convert it into grant and start an new project to solve the problems erupted by their previous project.

In another session of the seminar the people from Taunsa Barrage while talking about the adversaries created by the Taunsa Barrage Emergency Rehabilitation and modernization project (TBERMP) said that this project has given rise to three major problem and local population has worst affected by this project. The three problems include canal closure, displacement and flooding/river erosion. The canals which irrigate the land by taking water from Taunsa Barrage were closed down as a result of this modernization project. The canal closure has not only affected the irrigation process but the people are unable to get drinking water which is one of the basic human rights. Furthermore hundreds and thousands of the people are displaced and they are not properly resettled as they were promised before their displacement. Through this project it was tried to change the natural course of the river, this has resulted into river erosion and this has lead to heavy floods in the area damaging peoples' livelihoods and settlements.