PESHAWAR, Jan 2: The effectiveness of the social protection programmes being implemented in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will soon be assessed in a foreign-funded study to help the province streamline its poverty alleviation efforts, according to official sources.

The study titled ‘Institutional Mapping of Social Protection Schemes in the Province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’ is aimed at assisting the provincial government in establishing a comprehensive social protection system based on the modern international concept of ‘social protection floor,’ according to a development planner.

“The assignment is meant to evaluate the utility of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government’s social protection programmes already in place and identify major loopholes or gaps in their coverage and suggestion interventions to bring about improvements in the system,” he told Dawn on Wednesday.

An official said the exercise had been necessitated because the scope of the officially sponsored ongoing social protection programmes and their impact on the recipients/beneficiaries and the vulnerable population was not clear.

“Pakistan, as a whole, lacks database to assess the utility of the existing social protection programmes and hence, the government’s willingness to study the effectiveness of such programmes in the province will help map the diversity of social assistance that impact the vulnerable segments of the people of our province,” he said.

The official said the study would be conducted in accordance with the ILO/Japan Social Safety Net Fund Project, extending social protection in the province to build a comprehensive social protection policy at the country level.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, he added, had also reflected a development project in its current financial year’s development programme.

The effectiveness of the programmes to be studied, said the official, included the distribution of funds from Pakistan Baitul Mal, the worker welfare fund, employees’ social security institutions, the workers participation funds, and the provincial government’s wheat subsidy programme, Khushali Bank.

The need to carry out the assignment, said the official, had been felt because like several other South Asian countries in Pakistan, too, social security programmes were fragmented and duplicative, experiencing problems of ‘low coverage, poor targeting, low implementation,’ and suffered from inadequate institutional arrangements.

The official said the study would hopefully raise awareness about the utility and failures of the existing social protection programmes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, pinpointing challenges in the way of smooth implementation of such schemes in the province.“The evaluation would bring before us a clear picture about the existing programmes thus it would help to start a dialogue on how to make a comprehensive effort that corresponds to the needs and capacity of the provincial administration  in providing a structured and factual basis with an aim to alleviate poverty,” said the official.

A consultant will shortly be hired to develop an inventory of different social protection programmes being carried out in the province, highlighting their important features, including types of services, governance structure, beneficiaries and selection criteria, contributions from beneficiaries, and existing coverage of such programmes in terms of beneficiaries and districts.

The consultant, said the official, would focus on the four major components of social protection schemes, including basic health protection, income/subsistence security for children, income security for people earning their livelihood, and income security for the elderly, disabled and all those who lost the breadwinner in the family.

“All of the existing and planned government sponsored social protection schemes and those sponsored by non-governmental organisations and development partners would be assessed to enable the future provincial governments to conduct a more comprehensive and meaningful poverty alleviation strategy in the province,” said the development planner.