The Pakistan government was trying to bring down the population growth rate to 1.3 percent by 2020, local newspaper Daily Time quoting Federal Minister for Population Welfare Chardhry Shahbaz Hussain said Thursday.

Hussain said that medical practitioners were an essential factor in raising awareness about the importance of family planning among the general public.

He added that special courses detailing effective family planning would be initiated for nurses and college students to supplement the efforts aimed at controlling the birth rate.

He said the government was engaging religious leaders as well as private organizations to increase efforts to reduce the population growth rate.

The minister said that it was the country's interest to control the growing population to ensure a better living standard for the common people.

Although the government has had great success in economic development, if the population continued to increase at the current rate, the benefits would not be fully transferred to the public, he added.

Alluding to the alarming increase in population, he said that there was an average of 5,000 cubic meters of water for each person in 1947 but now the ratio had decreased to 1,000 cubic meters.

Pakistan has a population of 149 million with an increase of 2. 3 percent each year, according to official statistics in 2005.

He said that the government was also focusing on rural areas, which contain about 70 percent of the population and had been neglected in the past.

Source: Xinhua