Ehsaas opens 8171 SMS scheme, Ehsaas Kafaalat payments begin: Dr Nishtar

ISLAMABAD: Ehsaas has opened 8171 SMS campaign here on Tuesday to enable the new deserving households to check their eligibility under Ehsaas Kafaalat programme.

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation, Dr Sania Nishtar said that the deserving families desiring to find out their eligibility status in the Kafaalat programme should send their Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC) numbers on the SMS code 8171, which is activated from today.

“The 8171 SMS service has been made free of charge for the public and the entire cost will be borne by Ehsaas”, Dr Nishtar added.

“Ehsaas has begun the process of enrolling new beneficiaries, which have been identified on the basis of the 2021 Ehsaas survey which is now 81% complete”, she said.

Beneficiaries identified through the survey undergo “wealth profiling” through a data analytics mechanism to further clean the list of beneficiaries.

When beneficiaries send their 13-digital CNIC number on 8171, they will either get a message that they are eligible and will be asked to collect money; or they will be informed that they are ineligible, or they will get a “wait” instruction.

Those in the third category will be analyzed and will get a final message about their eligibility by June this year. The process of the survey will continue till June 2021.

Since the survey is 80% complete and 20% of the population is not in the database yet, if/when they send SMS to ascertain their status, they will be told to wait till they are surveyed.

Ehsaas has set up over 1600 payment camps throughout the country, starting this week. Each beneficiary is being paid Rs12,000 covering the period January 2021 -June 2021. Combined payment for 6 months is being made. People are collecting cash from especially set up payment camps.

Payments are being made in camps so that COVID-19 SOPS can be followed there.

In addition, payments can also be collected from biometrically enabled ATMs of Habib Bank in Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Islamabad, and from those of Bank Al-Falah in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan.