Pakistan has approved an ambitious five-year plan to reduce stunting among children of five years. The $2 billion plan aims to eliminate the problem among children born after 2023 and also reduce malnutrition. 

The key goal of the plan is to reduce stunting from 40.2 percent to 32 percent in five years and to reduce acute malnutrition to 10 percent from 17.7 percent.

A total of 68 districts will be targeted under the program, and the government will distribution nutritious sachets to children and their mothers, in a bid to reduce malnutrition. Maternal malnutrition will be reduced from 14.5 percent to 10.5 percent.

Under the plan, the federal government would spend a little over $ 1 billion to procure nutrition sachets while provincial governments would pay the salaries of workers involved in implementing the program. 

A whopping amount, almost a billion-dollar, would go into paying the salaries of workers- one of the reasons the country’s planning commission criticized the plan.  Calling the measures “short term”, the Planning Commission raised serious questions about the effectiveness of the whole program. The program is costly, and could not be sustained, claimed the commission.

It also said the after spending this amount, the government would be able to reduce the stunting from currently 40 percent to just 36 percent in the next five years. However, the target aim of the plan is to bring it down to 32 percent. 

The country’s planning ministry, too, raised several objections regarding the plan and had even once returned it for reconsideration.