Nishtar visits Mardan to inspect Ehsaas interventions in field

ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Sania Nishtar along with Ehsaas officials visited Mardan on Monday to inspect Ehsaas interventions in the field.

Dr. Nishtar joined students of Women University, district administration, journalists, teachers and Ehsaas survey enumerators gaining firsthand information about the multisectoral Ehsaas implementation across the district.

“Field visits and stakeholder consultations help to gauge program effectiveness and guide the implementation in a rapidly changing post-COVID environment”, Dr. Nishtar commented.

Dr. Nishtar held a policy dialogue with Ehsaas Undergraduate Scholarship recipients of 2019-20 at the Women University Mardan where she warmly received by the Vice Chancellor of the university, Professor Ghazala Yasmeen and other faculty members ,said a message received here.

More than 100 young girls participated in the dialogue, which provided a space to exchange ideas on how young girls from rural areas can increasingly benefit from the Ehsaas’ merit and need based scholarship.

Dr. Sania also answered a number of questions related to details of Ehsaas Undergraduate Scholarship program.

“This dialogue will contribute to amplify policy inputs for improving access to higher education”, Dr. Nishtar said.

Last year, 50,762 students have benefitted from the Ehsaas Undergraduate Scholarships worth 4.9 million. In total, 200,000 scholarships would be awarded over the four years to deserving students in 125 public universities.

It represents a paradigm shift in the government’s scholarship policy.

Ehsaas Scholarship recipients from Mardan appreciated that half of the scholarships are reserved for girls and that the scheme has enabled bright students to access undergraduate education regardless of income, gender, or location.

“Ehsaas Undergraduate Scholarship is an excellent avenue for deserving students who cannot afford university fee. Give women, financial access to education and they will change the face of the world”, Seema, a differently-abled Ehsaas Undergraduate scholarship awardee said in her welcome speech.

In 2019-20, nearly 400 girls from Women University Mardan had applied, out which 124 were awarded the Ehsaas scholarship.

For the current year 2020-21, as many as 380 students have applied for the scholarship before the online portal officially closed for applications on Nov 30, 2020.

The scrutiny of freshly received applications is currently in progress and subject to satisfactory academic progress, the awardees of last year will continue to receive Ehsaas scholarship throughout their undergraduate degree program.

Later, Dr. Nishtar addressed a press conference with local media reporters, journalists and district administration to brief them about the ongoing Ehsaas poverty census in the area. “Ehsaas poverty survey currently stands 71% ready in Mardan, 45% in KP and 65 percent in the country and successfully continues to accomplish by June 2021.

Once the Ehsaas survey gets finalized, the enrollment of new Ehsaas beneficiaries will be based on eligibility verification from the new database”, shared Dr. Nishtar.

She also acknowledged the provincial government, district administration and police department for their support and cooperation.

Accelerating the pace of Ehsaas poverty census, a new model has been deployed in KP to carry out the survey in partnership with provincial education department.

Through an android based application, the survey teams comprising of government teachers are collecting the data of households at the doorstep.

Subsequent to the press conference, Dr. Nishtar visited a survey site in Gujar Garhi area of Mardan to review the demo of the digital survey.

She also interacted with the survey team and a native household being surveyed in the local setting.