Posts for 'News' Category

She was purchased for Rs 5,000 by a brothel-keeper's agent before being brought to city's notorious red-light area Ganga Jamuna just a year ago. The teenager was apparently sold off by her father who urged her to accompany the women who had made the payment to city where she was promised a job. Ironically she feels happy being at the brothel than face hardships at home.

Renu (name changed) had sneaked out of the brothel, along with two others, during a police raid in the locality last week. The three girls were spotted at Nagpur railway station under suspicious circumstances. Due to reasons unknown, only Renu was handed over to non-government organization by the police though all three were taken into custody.

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Rising poverty is forcing people to abandon their children, as an infant girl was found in a cradle outside the Edhi Centre in Korangi on Tuesday, officials told The News. The infant girl, ostensibly a year-old, according to the officials, was dropped in a ‘Jhoola’ placed outside the centre by her guardians who disappeared from the site without informing the authorities. Crying bitterly and dressed in tattered clothes, the unknown girl was then brought to the Edhi head office in Mithadar, where she is currently being sheltered.

Renowned social worker and head of the Edhi Foundation Abdul Sattar Edhi told The News: “Due to the skyrocketing inflation and increasing poverty, parents are unable to support their families and provide a square meal. With the rise in prices of essential commodities, a large number of people are now coming to the centre, seeking shelter and free food.”

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An alliance of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) based in the Middle East Tuesday said that the worsening unemployment situation and poverty in the country pushes workers to work in war-torn countries like Afghanistan. Migrante-Middle East said that there are still a considerable number of migrant workers in Afghanistan and in Iraq despite the deployment ban imposed by the Philippine government.

“Millions of desperate Filipinos are willing to gamble just to land a job in war-stricken places than to see their families die of hunger and poverty in the Philippines,” Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator John Leonard Monterona said. “Why? The present wage earned by our local workers is not enough to compensate the high cost of living in the country,” he said.

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Work carried out by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health and other experts showed that “other additional factors” may be responsible for the city’s high levels of mortality and poor health. The research, published in the Royal Society for Public Health’s journal Public Health, looked at Glasgow and two other major UK cities – Liverpool and Manchester.

Which together share characteristics such as higher levels of poverty and poor health. Despite the similarities, and that the socio-economic profiles of the populations in all three cities were almost identical, premature deaths in Glasgow are more than 30% higher than in the other cities.

The study findings suggest that while income deprivation is an important determinant of health, its impact is affected by context. Deprivation as currently measured did not explain the higher levels of mortality seen in Glasgow.

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COMMUNITIES First partnerships have been told to sharpen up their governance procedures in the wake of serious financial concerns at one project. In March Social Justice Minister Carl Sargeant ordered a review of “high risk” projects in the Assembly Government’s flagship anti-poverty programme after the Wales Audit Office reported on irregularities at the Plas Madoc Communities First partnership in Wrexham. Relatives of the coordinator had been paid tens of thousands of pounds from public funds with no effective checks.

More than £241m has been spent on the programme, which is intended to increase prosperity levels in Wales’ poorest communities. Now the review has been completed and a number of recommendations made aimed at minimising the risk of similar occurrences in the future.

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In yet another shocking news, a poverty-stricken mother committed suicide by jumping into Chanab river along with her two children here Wednesday. According to police, a resident of Mahala Mustafa, Uzma took her two years old son Ahmed and four-year-old daughter Emaan. They dived in Chanab River and all the three died.

The bodies of Uzma and Emaan were recovered by the local people after hours of search, while the body of her son Ahmed is still missing. It is pertinent to mention that the current trend of rising food prices in Pakistan is driving women to commit suicide who face increased tensions within their homes. Between January and May this year, more than 300 women have ended their lives primarily due to financial reasons.

The world's anti-poverty gains achieved over the past years are being eroded by the presence of multiple crises, including an unprecedented economic and financial crisis, increased food security, oil prices volatility and climate change, said a new UN report released on Monday.

The report, entitled Trends and Progress in International Development Cooperation, was submitted by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the annual high-level segment of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), reported China's Xinhua news agency.

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The province of Punjab is spread over a large area, with a population larger than that of Germany and France combined. The chief minister of such a large province cannot be physically present everywhere. There is a need to develop and implement a system to eliminate or minimise incidents of suicides due to abject poverty. It is proposed that a law be passed by the Punjab Assembly according to which each and every MPA be given a revolving fund of Rs 50,000 to meet the economic needs of the people in absolute poverty.

THE government was accused of trying to abandon targets on child poverty last night, after proposals to slash benefits were revealed.Labour MP Frank Field – brought in to look at welfare and benefits by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government – is calling for child benefits to end when youngsters are aged 13 or 14.

The MP for Birkenhead said: "At that age mothers feelThey feel more secure with their children when they are over 13 and so on. If you have a crisis at work and can't be home, it's not such a disaster as when you have a seven-year-old coming home from school."

However yesterday, Labour leadership front-runner David Miliband suggested Mr Field was working with the government to "pave the way" to drop the target of eradicating child poverty by 2020.He said: "The commitment to abolishing child poverty was one of Labour's most visionary moments.

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A man committed suicide due to financial problems, police said on Monday. Muhammad Sajid son of Muhamamd Hanif, a resident of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, threw himself in front of a Lahore-bound train near ‘Gawalmandi Pul. Railway police shifted the dead body to civil hospital for autopsy after which it would be handed over to the heirs. This is not an isolated case as time and again such reports surface on national press, depicting that the level of poverty is touching alarming hieghts in the country.