ISLAMABAD: The government has launched a nationwide survey to enroll poor households for providing them financial assistance under its Ehsaas social protection programme.

As many as seven million people are registered as beneficiaries of the Ehsaas Kafalat programme, who received a monthly stipend of Rs2,000 each, said an official of the Poverty Allevia­tion and Social Safety Division.

The door-to-door digital survey, being carried out to identify more people below the poverty line, will be completed by June this year.

The wide-ranging Ehsaas programme includes Ehsaas Kafalat that covers monthly cash stipends of Rs2,000 each for 7m poorest households, 50,000 merit-cum-need-based scholarships every year for brilliant students from low-income backgrounds, 80,000 Ehsaas interest-free loans every month for small enterprises and quarterly conditional cash transfers for primary school-going children.

Collectively, the programme consists of over 140 programmes, policies and initiatives centered on a holistic approach to alleviate poverty.

Prime Minister Imran Khan had launched the Ehsaas programme on March 27, 2019 as the country’s largest-ever social protection and pov­erty eradication initiative.

Ehsaas is unique because of its scale, policy formulation, well-articulated strategy, multi-sectoral character, governance and integrity policy, institutional arrangements, monitoring framework and enhanced funding to deliver the programme nationwide.

Shelter homes (Panagahs) is one of the PM’s priority programmes. Dra­wing on proper need assessment, Ehsaas has opened 11 new Panagahs in the current quarter across the country.

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2021