Under the Ehsaas program, a countrywide survey called, National Socio-economic Registry Survey, has been completed, wherein information about 34.41 million households has been collected to precisely identify the ‘real poor’.
The information contains the geographic data of households, in addition to their demographics, socio-economic status, education, health, disability, employment, energy consumption, assets, communications, agri-landholdings, WASH [water, sanitation and hygiene], livestock, etc.
In this connection, Ehsaas held the launch ceremony chaired by Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Sania Nishtar.
The ceremony was attended by Country Director World Bank, Najy Benhassine, Resident Coordinator UNRC, Julien Harneis, Secretary, Ismat Tahira, and senior representatives of government departments and Asian Development Bank, along with development partners and media officials.
In her opening remarks, Dr. Sania said, “we have just concluded a new National Socioeconomic Registry of 34.41 million households. We did various validations of the data to precisely identify the real poor. With the readiness of survey, we are now transiting from static to dynamic registry to make it more targeting efficient and to avoid possible inclusion and exclusion errors occurred due to continuous change in socio-economic status of the households especially due to demographic change.”
She informed the participants that tehsil level Ehsaas Registration Desks had also been opened all over the country to keep the national socio-economic registry dynamic. She said that the registry would be regularly updated every four years. She added, “I congratulate Ehsaas team on successful completion of the survey. This is a great achievement, as, despite COVID-19, this survey has been completed after a lag of ten years.”
Speaking on the occasion, Country Director World Bank said, “the World Bank feels proud to be the technical partner in this game-changer survey.” He said this was South Asia’s first digitally-enabled socio-economic census. He said that the registry would facilitate data sharing for social protection programs of the federal government, provinces, government departments, and development agencies.
Director-General, Naveed Akbar, outlined the design, end-to-end digital methodology, approaches, and rigorous transparency measures embedded in the execution of the survey.
Ehsaas conducted a door-to-door computer-aided survey all across the country to gather data about the socio-economic status of households.
It is believed to be the most reliable dataset for the use of public sector institutions, think tanks, and development agencies for designing social protection and poverty alleviation programs. The data sharing will be steered through the Cognitive API Architecture approach. There will be two-way data sharing; agencies with whom data will be shared will also be required to update the registry with their own information.