ISLAMABAD: The social risks of proposed Pakistan Crisis Resilient Social Protection (CRISP) programme are assessed as moderate, says the World Bank. The proposed CRISP programme seeks to advance Pakistan's social protection system to make it an adaptive, crisis-resilient system, and move towards the next generation of programmes beyond social assistance by extending coverage to the 'missing middle'.
Moving to a more effective and responsive social protection system is expected to promote Covid-19 recovery and enable timely action in the event of future crisis, and to protect and help build resilience among a broader segment of the population that is vulnerable to shocks.
The World Bank in its report, 'Pakistan Crisis Resilient Social Protection Programme (CRISP) Environmental and Social Systems Assessment (ESSA)', stated that the primary risks are related to the complexity of institutional arrangements and intra-provincial coordination, the risks of social exclusion, if proper community outreach and social mobilisation activities (especially targeted to women) are not implemented; and the risk that technology upgrades envisaged are not effective because of a lack of commensurate investment in the human capabilities needed to implement technological change. There are also concerns related to data privacy and security.
The environmental risk of the project is rated as low, since its potential adverse risks and impacts on human populations and environment are likely to be insignificant. There are no civil works of any kind included in the project.
The procurement of ICT equipment will generate e-waste which can pose low environmental risks, if these wastes are not handled in environmentally sound manner. The e-waste impacts would be low due to small quantity and long and variable life of each equipment.
Major findings indicate that current regulations at both provincial and federal levels, lack specific provisions, pertinent to e-waste management. Hazardous substances, mentioned under Hazardous Substance Rules, 2003, to be controlled, do not mention e-waste, rather different hazardous chemicals and heavy metals are mentioned which can be the part of the e-waste or released during dismantling, burning, chemical processing or disposing on the land.
Enforcement of these provisions are weak in the country due to lack of enforcement infrastructure and resources. It is assessed that being the implementation department of the programme, the BISP needs to develop and implement standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the sale and procurement of the ICT equipment.
The social risks are manageable by including mitigation strategies in the project design. This programme should also build upon and leverage the knowledge emerging from both the pilot phase experiences, and implementation experience from the Punjab Human Capital Investment Project (P164785) and the FATA Temporarily Displaced People Project (FATA TDP, P154278).
This knowledge will help to devise collaborative province-specific financial and operational models. The proposed Program Development Objective (PDO) is as follows: to support positive disruptions and advances in the social protection system to make it more adaptive and to build crisis-resilience among poor and vulnerable households.
Specifically, it would: (i) Build-in greater innovation and technology within the SP system to strengthen the social registry, optimize the use of big data, and advance the delivery system components including the payment systems, the social registry, and related information systems (Results Area 1).
(ii) Support the next generation of social protection interventions targeting the 'missing middle' (uncovered by existing safety nets or formal social insurance) by developing innovative hybrid social protection mechanisms. (Results Area 2).
(iii) Promote medium- to long-term mitigation of COVID impacts by prioritising the human capital accumulation among the youngest.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020