Nation-wide Poverty Scorecard Targeting Survey to be completed by June 30

ISLAMABAD: The first ever nation-wide poverty scorecard targeting survey which was launched from October 2010 in all districts of the country, including AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan, with an initial target to cover almost 25 million households will be completed by June 30, 2012 and over 27 million households will be covered nationwide.

According to the Annual plan of the government 2012-13 this new system of targeting poor households aimed at a much higher degree of objectivity, using international best practices, to minimize inclusion and exclusion errors.

The use of global positioning system (GPS) devices was also made mandatory in this phase to uphold the dignity of households by conducting the survey at their doorsteps. It also ensures that no house was left unaccounted.       The survey will be completed by June 30, 2012 and over 27 million households will be covered nationwide.

The task for data entry was entrusted to NADRA and to date, 6.64 million beneficiaries have been identified and it is expected that this figure would reach almost 7 million families by June 2012, if all data processing is completed.

"During 2011-12, Rs 33.5 billion has been distributed among 3.5 million recipients. This include over Rs 1.49 billion paid through Smart Cards to 162,789 recipients and Rs 826.4 million paid to about 120,000 million recipients through mobile phone banking", the Plan revealed.

It added that rest of the cash transfers were made through Pakistan Post money orders.

The plan said that in order to further improve the efficiency of the payment delivery mechanisms, BISP has signed agreements with several commercial banks during the current fiscal year to launch Benazir Debit Cards in over 100 districts of Pakistan by June 2012.

Up to March 2012, 392,000 Debit Cards have been distributed and Rs 1.02 billion has been disbursed to the beneficiaries through these debit cards.

Under the Plan for 2012-13 its has been decided identification of new recipient families, bringing the total to 7 million recipients, payments to all beneficiaries through Benazir Debit Cards in 100+ districts, launching of Waseela-e-Taleem in 20 districts, provision of life insurance cover to the bread-winners of additional 1 million recipient families bringing the number of families with life insurance cover to 5 million, provision of demand driven vocational and technical training, in over 60 fields, to one person each from 150,000 recipient families, launch of Health Insurance in 4 districts (one in each province), and provision of micro-finance to 10,000 recipients.