Pace of Ehsaas Program termed slow: Many families not to receive cash transfer before mid-June: Dr Pasha

With the current pace of the Ehsaas Program, there are many families that would not receive the cash transfer before mid-June over two months of the commencement of the disbursement process, said renowned economist and former finance minister Dr Hafiz Pasha.
He feared that this slow pace of the programme would put these families in an extremely difficult position. "The difficulty is that poor families have been suffering shortages of food for sometimes now," he added.
He was talking to Business Recorder on Tuesday with reference to the Ehsaas Programme of the present government, targeting a record 12 million families throughout the country. While appreciating the strong commitment of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government to tackle the problem of a big increase in the number of poor families due to COVID-19, he stressed that the pace of implementation of Ehsaas Programme is slow.
He said the programme is almost three times the scale of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) of previous governments. However, he said the distribution of cash transfer commenced on the 9th of April. Thereafter, by 21st of May some 9.2 million families have received the cash amount of Rs 12000 each. As such 77 percent coverage had been achieved in 42 days. Currently, the coverage is expanding at the rate of 100,000 per day.
Dr Pasha further pointed out that there are problems with the regional distribution of the cash transfers. In particular, he said, Balochistan has received less than 5 percent of the amount disbursed while its share in the number of poor is over 80 percent. Similarly, he said, Punjab has a currently a share of 43 percent whereas it should have a share of almost 50 percent.
He said the amount of transfer for a family is only Rs3000 per month. However, the more important question is: "Will this expanded programme of cash transfer continue on a regular basis after four months and will the government make provision for this in the budget of 2020-21?"
The cash-transfer program of the government is accessible through a free of charge SMS number (8171) which vulnerable people, such as daily wagers and piece-rate workers, can use to lodge requests or check their eligibility and receive Rs12000 from a payment outlet after biometric verification.