Zubair Qureshi
Islamabad
In her address to virtual meetings of the World Bank Group-IMF Annual on Tuesday, Special Assistant to PM on Social Protection & Poverty Alleviation Dr Sania Nishtar emphasized the impact of Ehsaas Emergency Cash on ground which meant giving cash into the hands of millions of families at a time of extreme uncertainty.
This is truly humbling as COVID-19 negatively impacted around 160 million people in Pakistan. In response, the Government of Pakistan delivered Cash assistance to 15 million families in distress, said Dr Nishtar.
She was invited to participate as a panelist in the event titled ‘Protecting South Asia’s Poor and Vulnerable Against COVID-19 & Beyond.’ The South Asian event focused on the social protection programmes as a cornerstone of relief and longer-term recovery.
The virtual event was a direct contribution to the central theme of the Annual Meetings of Supporting a Resilient Recovery: building resilience, improving inclusion, promoting economic growth, and sustaining businesses and jobs.
Dr Nishtar was joined by Special Economic Advisor to the PM of Nepal, Executive Director of BRAC Bangladesh, Professor of Cornell University and Indian Minister for Textiles and Minister for Women and Child Development.
Through an engaging discussion with policymakers, practitioners, scholars and international experts, the panel highlighted the relief efforts in the South Asia region and shared views on how social protection could be designed to reach all and support a resilient recovery and inclusive long-term growth.
Dr Nishtar said, “Digital capabilities established in 2019 as part of Ehsaas, were adapted to deliver Ehsaas Emergency Cash, in particular, a new biometric payment system, a demand side SMS based request seeking platform and a new wealth-profiling big data analytics mechanism.”
Concluding the discussion, she said many challenges were encountered during the disbursements.
“Ehsaas Emergency Cash was rolled out with lockdowns in effect, public transport suspended, and risk of disease spread looming. Additional challenges related to issues of logistics, connectivity, liquidity, cyberattacks, biometric failures, and limitations of data-driven messaging. A whole of government approach and real time evaluation helped to successfully address these challenges with speed. Fiscal measures were adopted to incentivize retailers to work in a difficult environment; communication measures were taken to address low financial and digital literacy.”
