"We must all strive to free disadvantaged populations and regions from the yoke of poverty, exclusion and backwardness. We must help them reach self-reliance in their effort to achieve sustainable development. This target is the real challenge lying ahead for the nation," said HM King Mohammed VI, in a speech addressed to the nation on Wednesday, announcing the launching of the National Initiative for Human Development.
The launching of the National Initiative for Human Development illustrates the sovereign's concern to combat poverty and slums, a fertile ground for fundamentalists, two years after the May 16 attacks carried out by Islamists, who killed 45 people in 2003.
"Having visited various regions of the Kingdom to get first-hand information about your living conditions, and after careful consideration, I have decided to talk to you today about an issue which is of crucial importance to Moroccans," said the King.
"I am referring to the social problem which, in my view, represents the most serious challenge to our project for a new, developed society, and which I have decided to tackle by launching, with God's help, an ambitious, innovative plan called the National Initiative for Human Development," he added.
King Mohammed VI outlined the plan, expected to cost MAD 1.0 billion a year, according to figures from the Ministry of Social Development, Family and Solidarity. The programme is designed to provide basic infrastructure to millions of Moroccans, from adequate housing and drinking water to health care and education.
The Initiative is based on four key elements, which consolidate the socio-economic development of the country as well as the fundamental reforms and the progress achieved to strengthen of the Rule of Law.
The first element is based on an objective assessment of Morocco's social needs, which indicates that several regions and large segments of the population are facing difficult conditions, and are even suffering from poverty and exclusion.
"Such a situation is clearly inconsistent with the life of dignity I want for all Moroccans," emphasised the King.
The King recalled that many urban and sub-urban districts and shanty-towns, and a number of communities, particularly in rural areas, lack the most basic social services and facilities, and constitute fertile ground for the spread of illiteracy, unemployment, exclusion and interrupted schooling.
The monarch said that an effective and tangible action is needed to change things concretely and for the better.
The monarch also warned that any attempt to exploit people's destitution in order to achieve political gain, arouse extremist impulses or spread feelings of pessimism, defeatism and helplessness would be both dishonest and morally unacceptable.
"Secondly, the Initiative springs from the conviction that achieving social development - which is a complex, arduous long-term task - cannot be reduced merely to providing limited occasional assistance, doing charitable work, or helping others simply because we think we ought to," said the King
The third key element is related to the country's open policy, in view of the challenges and vulnerabilities which weaken the social and territorial bonds and convey consumption standards, ways of life and invading diagrams of thought.
The Initiative stems, in the fourth place, from the lessons drawn from the past experiments and the models having proven reliable in certain countries, in such matters as the fight against poverty and exclusion.
The Sovereign has set three main axes for the methodology of action in order to implement the National Initiative for Human Development. He underlined the need for tackling, first, the social deficit, by widening access to basic equipment and social services, such as health, education, the elimination of illiteracy, water, electricity and cultural infrastructures.
Second, he emphasized the importance of the promotion of steady incomes and employment-generating activities, and the adoption of a more imaginative action in direction of the informal sector.
To this end, the Sovereign called on the government and the various partners to make the forthcoming national meetings on employment an opportunity to open a constructive dialogue and to make specific proposals, in order to put an end to the unemployment of young people.
The third axis consists of providing assistance to the most vulnerable people with specific needs, to enable them to free themselves from the yoke of precarity and to preserve their dignity.
Thus, the first stage of the programme will seek to speed up the social upgrading of 360 communities from among the poorest in the rural world, in addition to 250 poor districts in cities and suburbs, old medinas and shanty towns, where the ills of social exclusion, unemployment, delinquency and destitution are most acute.
It will also progressively target the upgrading of both the capacities and the quality of the existing reception centres, or the creation of new specialized centres, capable of accommodating and providing assistance to the people in a situation of great precarity.
The Sovereign underlined that in spite of the limited means, one should not submit to a precarious situation, viewed as a fate by the Moroccan people. He rather highlighted the assets of the country, including the potential of creativity and qualified human resources.
The monarch sketched broad outlines of the plan, but gave the government three months to come up with further practical details for the scheme.
He also ordered political parties to include the plan in their programmes ahead of legislative elections in 2007 and said the scheme's long-term goal was to improve the country's human development ranking.
The announcement came two days after the second anniversary of the Casablanca attacks carried out by 12 suicide bombers, all from a shanty town in Morocco's business capital, Casablanca.
By Karima Rhanem
© Morocco Times 2005
