The National Assembly Standing Committee on Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Division held a meeting at Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) headquarters with MNA Saira Bano in the chair. The members of the committee expressed dissatisfaction with the survey completed under the Ehsaas Program conducted through the Aurat Foundation and other NGOs.
At the outset, National Socio-Economic Registry (NSER) Director Noman Ali gave a detailed presentation on the survey completed under the Ehsaas Program for registering the needy and poor people across the country. The main aim of NSER is to ensure objectivity in identifying beneficiaries and for transparency in implementing interventions and effective targeting of BISP beneficiaries, he said.
BISP Chairperson Sania Nishtar and BISP Director-General Naveed Akbar gave a comprehensive briefing on the survey process, including data collection of households of the actual needy and poor people, its mechanism to address the errors of data collection, detail of poverty indicators and allocation of sources.
They further informed that at each tehsil level, Ehsaas registration desks have been established for the destitute people not included in the survey. The members of the committee expressed dissatisfaction with the survey conducted through the Aurat Foundation and other NGOs and recommended that the public representatives should also be involved in identifying and registering the poor people in their constituencies under the program. The committee further decided that Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for the financial year 2022-23 would be discussed in the next meeting.
The meeting was attended by MNAs Syed Mehmood Shah, Shagufta Jumani, Lal Chand, Kiran Imran Dar, Nuzhat Pathan, Aliya Hamza Malik and other relevant officials.