Govt abolishes CNIC validity requirement for Ehsaas Emergency Cash Program

• Nishtar informed that so far Rs69 billion has been distributed among 5.7 million families.
• She said that work on the third category would start soon and the quota in the category was fixed according to the population of the provinces.

The government has abolished the requirement for National Identity Card validity in the Ehsaas Emergency Cash Program.

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad on Thursday, Dr. Sania Nishtar, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) said that category one of the cash program has been completed eighty percent, after which category two of Ehsas Emergency Cash Program is underway.

She informed that so far Rs69 billion has been distributed among 5.7 million families, over 146 million SMS were received for cash assistance out of which while 48 million were sent more than once from the same identity card.

Sania Nishtar said that about 8.8 million identity cards were rejected on SMS family duplication, whereas, 88,621 identity card numbers could not be verified.

She said that work on the third category would start soon and the quota in the category was fixed according to the population of the provinces.

The Special Assistant further said that there has never been a bigger social security program in the history of Pakistan. The Prime Minister directed that the program should be kept non-political and transparent. The SAPM said that this program is running during the lockdown and difficult conditions so there are problems. Fingerprints are also a problem at the moment.

She said that payment of money to those whose ID cards had expired was a big problem but now the condition of the validity of CNIC has been removed.