Staff Reporter
Prime Minister Imran Khan opened the Ehsaas Rashan portal on Tuesday to facilitate the private sector in providing food rations to the most vulnerable affected in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Through the portal, the role of government will be to facilitate match-making between donors and beneficiaries (e.g., on geographic basis) and provide data of eligible beneficiaries to donors.
During this crisis, many private sector organizations have expressed their willingness to support the needy, complementing the support that the Government is providing. This portal enables this generosity to be coordinated across the country. To facilitate the process, the government has developed a web-based portal, accessible at https://rashan.pass.gov.pk/.
Addressing a press conference Prime Minister’s Special Assistant on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Sania Nishtar said, “The Ehsaas Rashan portal will ensure food disbursement at a national scale not seen before in the country, and falls under the safety nets pillar of the broader Ehsaas program, which is aimed at establishing a welfare state in Pakistan.” Adding further, she stated, “The role of the government is entirely match making between credible donors, and eligible beneficiaries.”
Part of Rashan portal protocols, beneficiaries’ information will be validated, and eligibility determined using Ehsaas data. Donors will be evaluated against a specific eligibility criterion to ensure only trustworthy, tax compliant, and at-scale organizations become partners of the program. Further, after signing data privacy agreements, beneficiary information will be shared with donors to ensure disbursement of food ration packs or cash equivalent to beneficiaries. The government will ensure one person from family gets benefit and will monitor delivery on a sample basis.
The private sector will be responsible for establishing mechanism for sourcing and disbursement of Rashan or cash equivalent for beneficiaries. Donors will be given a list of parameters to select from to identify which segment of the beneficiaries do they want to support. The parameters include area of residence district/tehsil, gender of the beneficiary, etc. Based on the chosen parameters a subset of beneficiaries will be identified from a larger pool who may then benefit based on a first-in first-out basis.
There are two categories of donors that the government is looking towards initially in the Ehsaas Rashan Portal i.e. For-profit private organizations and Not-for-profit private organizations. Their eligibly criteria are posted on the website https://rashan.pass.gov.pk/. We are starting with large corporate donors with annual revenue of at least PKR 2 bn willing to donate at least PKR 10 Million in Rashan packs or cash equivalent. Similarly, NGOs approved by Ministry of Interior and EAD willing to donate PKR 2 bn are invited to participate at this stage.
