The Ehsaas Rashan Riayat Steering Committee has revised the eligibility criteria for low-income families. Families with monthly earnings below Rs. 50,000 can now register for the subsidy in the second phase of the registration campaign.
The committee met in Islamabad today with the Special Assistant to the Prime Minister, Dr. Sania Nishtar, in the chair.
The meeting commenced with a briefing on the rollout progress of Ehsaas Rashan Riayat and the Steering Committee was informed that the Ehsaas Rashan Registration website has received 700 million hits since the registration opened in the first phase. Overall, 19.5 million applications were received, of which 9.3 million were those from unique families under the first phase of registrations.
The SAPM said, “[The] applications of the registered families are currently going through data analytics. Those whose eligibility has been determined are being sent 8171 confirmation messages in a phased manner. Also, eligible families have already started availing the Ehsaas Rashan subsidy from the network of 7,978 Utility Stores and National Bank of Pakistan’s (NBP) authorized Kiryana retailers”.
The members of the committee took targeting decisions in line with the decision of the Federal Cabinet to support low-income families through Ehsaas’s targeted subsidies program. Revising the eligibility criteria, the committee agreed to change the family income threshold to a certain level so that the maximum number of deserving families may benefit from the program.
Under the second phase of the registration, the Ehsaas 8171 SMS service has also been reopened recently to register low-income families for the Ehsaas Rashan Riayat program. The committee agreed that families earning below Rs. 50,000 a month can register for it by sending their CNIC numbers to 8171. The Ehsaas Rashan portal is also open to register Kiryana retailers.
The Steering Committee is mandated to oversee the roll-out of the Ehsaas Rashan Riayat through the Poverty Alleviation & Social Safety Division (PASSD) and the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP). Under the stewardship of the Steering Committee, a Project Management Unit (PMU) has also been established within the Division, and the PMU will provide oversight of the project’s fiscal management, monitoring and evaluation, and policy.
The Ehsaas Rashan Riayat program offers a 30 percent targeted subsidy for 20 million families for the purchase of flour, pulses, cooking oil, or ghee every month. The program is funded jointly by the federal and provincial governments of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
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