Tag: Ehsaas

  • Everything you need to know about Ehsaas Rashan programme

    Everything you need to know about Ehsaas Rashan programme

    The registration of poor families whose monthly income is less than Rs31,000 has begun today under the Ehsaas Rashan Programme. Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Dr Sania Nishtar, giving details of the programme, said that the eligible families will be able to obtain items of daily use like flour, oil, sugar and pulses at subsidised rates from Utility Stores and retail stores (kiryana shops). Small retail stores opened even in streets and localities will also provide this facility if they are registered and authorised for this system.

    Registration process:

    The National Socio Economic Registry (NSER) survey of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) has been completed.  A database of 27 million households was originally developed during a nationwide survey under the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government in 2010-11.

    Another survey will be used to identify deserving families for this new pro-poor programme. It will take three or four weeks to complete the process of registration. The beneficiaries will need a mobile phone number registered on their Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC), which will be produced before the specific stores from which purchases on subsidised rates will be sought.

    How will it work?

    The kiryana merchants will require downloading the relevant app on their Android phones, entering CNIC numbers of the customers and pass on the benefits after authentication from the back-end immediately.

    The customer will receive a verification code, which would be entered by the kiryana merchant in the app.

    Eligibility Criteria:

    20 million households across Pakistan with a poverty score of less than 39 and an income of Rs 31,000 per month.

  • Govt to add 0.7m intermediate students in Waseela-e-Taleem

    The federal government has decided to add intermediate students to an educational conditional cash transfer project, the Waseela-e-Taleem programme.

    As per reports, Ehsaas board will have a meeting on June 24 for the final approval.

    Under the project. intermediate students are given cash grants from underprivileged families on the condition of 70 per cent attendance in school.
    The Ehsaas Steering Committee has approved the inclusion of higher secondary education in the programme.

    With such a development, they added that approximately 700,000 students would get the advantage and the government has planned to allot Rs5 billion worth of funds for the project in the next fiscal year.

    Also Read: Nagar Valley girls to get first higher secondary school

    The boys would get worth Rs3,500 cash stipend and girls would get worth Rs4,000 every quarter.

    Moreover, students from the 6th to 10th standard would also get conditional cash assistance under this programme According to the plan, boys in the above-mentioned class bracket would get worth Rs2,500 cash assistance and girls would get worth Rs3,000 stipend from July every quarter.

  • World Banks approves $600mn for Ehsaas program expansion

    World Banks approves $600mn for Ehsaas program expansion

    Executive Directors at the World Bank have approved $600 million for the Crisis-Resilient Social Protection Program (CRISP) that will help the Pakistani government expand the Ehsaas Program. The Ehsaas Program is an initiative taken by Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan for poverty alleviation and to protect vulnerable households in Pakistan.

    Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, tens of thousands of families across Pakistan face economic hardship, particularly workers in the informal sector.

    World Bank Country Director Najy Behassine, speaking about the project, said: “Such workers barely have savings to use in crises and they are not covered by existing social safety net program. This investment will enable Ehsaas program to develop a more efficient and adaptive social protection system for crises and resilience to future shocks.”

    As per details, CRISP will facilitate the Ehsaas social protection programs so that aid may reach informal workers, particularly women through an innovative approach. It will provide a platform through which the government can rapidly respond to support the most affected households during an economic crisis.

    “In the event of a crisis, a more flexible and dynamic social protection system can significantly reduce the time needed to respond to peoples’ needs as well as supporting a faster recovery,” said Amjad Zafar Khan, Task Team Leader for the Crisis-Resilient Social Protection program.

    CRISP will also improve the capacity of the social registry to maintain up-to-date accurate household data and exchange data among social programs while providing greater beneficiary choice in the biometric payment systems.

  • Pakistan ready to share Ehsaas project with India: PM

    Pakistan ready to share Ehsaas project with India: PM

    Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan has offered sharing his government’s cash transfer flagship programme that successfully dealt with the negative fallout of COVID-19 on vulnerable communities, with India.

    “I am ready to offer help and share our successful cash transfer programme, lauded internationally for its reach and transparency, with India,” the premier said in a tweet while sharing a report that 34 per cent households across India will not be able to survive for more than a week without assistance.

    He said his government successfully transferred Rs120 billion in nine weeks to over 10 million families in a transparent manner to deal with the economic fallout of the virus.

    A study titled “How are Indian households coping under the COVID-19 lockdown? Eight key findings”, carried out by experts at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago and the Mumbai-based Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE) reveals that nearly 84 per cent of Indian households are seeing decreases in income since the lockdown began. Nearly a third of all households will not be able to survive beyond a week without additional assistance.

    “Direct and immediate transfers of food and cash are a very high priority,” said Heather Schofield, assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the Perelman School of Medicine and a Wharton professor of business economics and public policy.

    When a nationwide lockdown began in late March, India’s Ministry of Labour and Employment asked private and public organisations not to terminate jobs on the pretext of prevailing conditions. But these pleas hardly made any difference and large-scale retrenchments that took place as cope with the contagion.

    However, the study found a “sharp and broad negative impact on household income” as the pandemic diminished their staying capacity, adding that the unemployment rate in the country had crossed 27 percent in early May, up nearly four-fold from levels in January-February.

    The fall in incomes affected people in the lower and middle segments of the income distribution most severely, the study found. “Households in the lowest of the five income groups had average monthly per-capital earnings of less than Rs3,800 (about $50), while those at the high end made between Rs12,374 and upwards of Rs100,000 ($167 to $1,370 and more).”

    Households in the middle-income groups are hurt disproportionately more perhaps because they are most likely to be dependent on sources of income that are hit due to the lockdown, the study’s authors stated.

    Rural households have seen disproportionately more distress than those in urban India during the lockdowns. Incomes have fallen at some 88% of rural households, compared to 75% of urban households, the study found.

    Only 30% of households are able to survive one month or more without additional assistance. “Crucially, 14% of the sample is already out of funds and risks immediate and severe deprivation if they are unable to borrow or receive additional benefits,” the report warned.

    “Rapid distribution of in-kind or cash transfers is needed to prevent a sharp increase in malnutrition and severe deprivation. Such transfers will also likely promote a more robust recovery as the country is able to reopen.”

    The need for additional resources is also affected by where the household is located. “The urban poor have the least time before their resources are depleted,” the study said.

    Nearly two-thirds of urban households that earn less than median income households will run out of resources in two weeks. Rural households in similar income groups have relatively more resilience, the study found, as 54% of them have sufficient resources for the same period of time.

  • Eight phone numbers blocked by PTA over Ehsaas programme fraud

    Eight phone numbers blocked by PTA over Ehsaas programme fraud

    The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked eight mobile phone numbers due to complaints against them over Ehsaas programme fraud.

    Many people registered a complaint with the PTA that the numbers asked for their CNIC numbers and other details via text message to register for the Ehsaas Emergency Cash programme.

    PTA has sent these numbers to the Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) to investigate who is behind these scams.

    The authority has advised people to not share personal information with anybody on their mobile phones. And if they want to report any suspicious activity, they can do so by calling on 0800-55055.

    Dr Sania Nishtar, special assistant to PM on poverty alleviation, has also told people to not leave their homes unless they receive a message from 8171 confirming the collection point.

  • Praise for PM, his team as ‘historic’ social assistance programme to tackle coronavirus is launched

    Pakistan has launched the largest social protection effort in the country’s history with plans to pay close to $1 billion dollars to the poor in an effort to counter the economic fallout amid the new coronavirus — COVID-19 — outbreak, CNN reported.

    The Ehsaas Emergency Cash programme is a financial assistance effort to assist parts of the population that have been worst hit by the ongoing lockdown in the country, according to Sania Nishtar, special assistant to Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan on Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety.

    The programme, which aims to cover 12 million families, is meant to assist them to “buy rations so that they don’t go hungry”.

    The premier himself has also lauded the “historic” transfer of cash to the needy, terming it a “great achievement” of his government.

    “Today saw the launch of the biggest cash distribution by any government in Pakistan’s history, directly to the most vulnerable and needy citizens in our society,” he said in a series of tweets.

    Authorities have used SMS messages and Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) numbers from the country’s extensive National Database & Registration Authority (NADRA) to identify and contact eligible families.

    By the time this report was filed, the number of confirmed cases in Pakistan stood at 4,688 with 68 fatalities and 727 recoveries.

  • Imran govt renamed ‘Benazir Income Support Programme’ as ‘Ehsaas’

    Imran govt renamed ‘Benazir Income Support Programme’ as ‘Ehsaas’

    In yet another embarrassing development for the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the government’s lawyer has told the Supreme Court (SC) that Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) — a flagship project of the Pakistan People’s Party’s (PPP) government for poverty reduction — was renamed as Ehsaas — a similar and much-boasted-about initiative by Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan.

    As per the details, Attorney General for Pakistan (AGP) Khalid Jawed Khan on Tuesday told the apex court that the data collected by BISP, “which had been renamed as Ehsaas”, was being used by the government to ensure that money reaches the poor amid lockdowns due to the spread of coronavirus.

    A five-member larger bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Gulzar Ahmed and comprising Justice Umar Ata Bandial, Justice Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin Ahmed was hearing the case regarding the closure of hospitals in the country during the global outbreak.

    During the course of proceedings, the AGP apprised the court that he had talked to Special Assistant to the PM (SAPM) on Health Dr Zafar Mirza regarding the court’s query about the closure of out-patient departments of hospitals, who wanted to give a briefing to the court on the steps taken by the government in the health sector. The government was taking steps to combat the virus, he added.

    Justice Umar Ata Bandial said the government had to help the people on the ground. “If there were local governments, the people would have been helped at the grassroots level,” he said, adding that the local government system in the country, including Islamabad, was dysfunctional.

    The CJP said the government’s job was not to keep employees on contract instead of appointing on a regular basis.

    The AGP said that the federal cabinet had discussed the matter.

    The CJP asked the government to appoint all employees on a regular basis in all the departments of hospitals. “Many cases were pending in the SC regarding the regularisation of employees,” he remarked.

    CJP Gulzar further said the government had appointed the employees on a contract basis, instead of recruiting them through the Public Service Commission.

    He said the parliament should be in session at all times to formulate new laws. The job of courts was not to make laws, he added.

    The CJP then asked who was being paid under the Ehsaas programme, to which the AGP replied that the government would give money to those below the poverty line.

    “How will the government know if money reached the poor or not?” the top judge question.

    “The data collected by BISP, which had been renamed as Ehsaas, is being used,” the lawyer said in response, adding that Ehsaas programme had been approved by a foreign agency.

    WATCH VIDEO:

    https://twitter.com/fatah_pak/status/1247592261300424708?s=21

    PPP REACTS:

    Reacting to the revelation, PPP Information Secretary Dr Nafisa Shah has expressed her shock and said that a law made by the parliament could not be changed.

    “Thousands of poor have been left without income support by the people who are haters of the late Benazir Bhutto,” she said in a statement and asked what kind of Ehsaas took away bread from the poor women of Pakistan.

    Shah said that this was the time when the neglected needed the most help, but the government had let them down.

    “BISP had given confidence to the poor women of Pakistan. By changing the name of this programme poor women have been deprived of their income. Imran Khan and his government have no right or authority to change the name of a programme established by [the] parliament,” she concluded.