Including the poor in the PRSP process by consulting the poor at the grassroots

This report documents a consultation by the Rural Support Programmes Network (RSPN), in Pakistan. Through its member organisations RSPN undertook 121 consultations, in 49 districts across Pakistan (all provinces and in the Northern Areas and Azad Jammu and Kashmir) at the grassroots level that provided inputs to the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) being prepared by the Government of Pakistan. The report contains the views of rural communities in Pakistan on why they think there is growing poverty in the country. It also contains their solutions to poverty, as active contributors and participants in the development process. The report is divided into three parts. The first part gives an introduction to the study and presents a summry of the main findings. Part two includes the community dialogue reports from the different Rural Support Programmes, in eleven chapters. Part three gives suggestions for the governmentÆs PRSP document; to NGOs and civil society; and to monitoring of the PRSP. Annexes contain documents with proceedings form further workshops and meetings relating to the PRSPs. Among the findings from the study were that the main reason of poverty was perceived to be bad governance, and wide discrepancies in prioritisations of government to meet the needs of the poor and the real needs of the poor. The findings highlight that facilities, services ad support that are supposed to be in place for the people are not in fact reaching the poor and those without the right æconnectionsÆ. Proper implementation of plans and programmes are hampered by lack of participation, mistaken priorities, mismanagement, incompetence, corruption etc