Staff Reporter
The first meeting of Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Division (PASSD) Ehsaas Implementation Group on Tuesday held to discuss the roles, key respective areas of execution and monitoring mechanisms of different organizations involved in the Ehsaas Programme under the umbrella of PASSD.
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation Dr Sania Nishtar chaired the meeting, a press release said.
She said that all the organizations under PASSD involved in implementing Ehsaas were given roles that were mutually reinforcing and every effort would be made to exploit synergy.
Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) was mandated to run cash transfers and Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal’s to be responsible for social protection whereas the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation has the responsibility for poverty graduation.
Dr Sania said that she wanted to ingrain the culture of collaboration within PASSD and hence cross-organizational committees were being made.
“In addition, there would be a special emphasis on governance and integrity, which is why we have launched the Governance and Integrity policy last week” she said.
She apprised the participants that PASSD would be engaged with organizations concerned under Ehsaas to ensure policy coherence, governance oversight, coordination and monitoring.
To avoid any duplication among the implementing organizations, an online portal would be setup to provide one window visibility of all social safety and poverty alleviation interventions being carried out under Ehsaas, she added.
Secretary BISP assured that BISP has all the technical infrastructure in hand to share database facilities with all the stakeholders concerned for identification and targeting of beneficiaries based on poverty score card (PSC); he shared details about the new National Socioeconomic Survey, which is underway.
Dr Nishtar appreciated the supply centered role of BISP under Ehsaas programme as its national socio-economic registry survey will provide the basis for all policy interventions to be executed under Ehsaas.
Managing Director, PBM while sharing his organizational functions and jurisdictional roles said that under Ehsaas, as many as 150 schools for marginalized will be rehabilitated, 150 women empowerment centres (educational and vocational set ups) will be supported for socio-economically uplifting rural women.
In addition, 5 old people homes would be developed under Ehsaas.
MD PBM shared that, guided by PASSD, efforts were underway to develop a policy on orphanages.
Head of Programmes, PPAF shared details of The National Poverty Graduation Initiative (NPGI) that is part of the Ehsaas strategy.
It aims to graduate the poorest households out of poverty and set them on a course of economic and social prosperity.
Its components include (i) 225,000 asset transfers; (ii) 3.8 million interest free loans and; (iii) vocational and skills training tomake assets productive.
Dr. Nishtar reiterated that the graduation initiative was unique of its kind and aims to reduce dependence of the population at the bottom of the economic pyramid on government-led social safety nets (BISP, Zakat and Baitul Mal programs) and helps to bring this population into the mainstream of economic development and financial inclusion.
The function of TVO to support programmes for street children, seasonal migrants, transgender and victims of child and bonded labor and daily wage workers also came under discussion.
Similarly, it was shared that Centre for rural entrepreneurship will work around Solutions Innovation Challenge and Center for Rural Economy will support agricultural value chains under Ehsaas.—APP
