ISLAMABAD: After more than a year delay, the federal government on Thursday finally announced to have completed National Socio-economic Registry (NSER) survey—aimed at countrywide data collection of households for social welfare purposes— that was originally scheduled to be completed in 2020 but missed the related deadlines.

On November 27, 2019, Prime Minister Imran Khan received a detailed briefing on the NSER survey at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). According to a press release issued by PMO then, PM’s Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation Special Assistant Dr Sania Nishtar briefed the meeting that the initial survey conducted by BISP (Benazir Income Support Programme) in 2011 had a number of shortcomings and a fresh survey was commissioned which would be completed by 2020 with the help of NADRA (National Database and Registration Authority).

However, the NSER survey was never completed in 2020 and it was announced by Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Division (PASSD) in December 2020 that the survey would be completed before June 2021. This deadline was also missed as the government officials cited COVID-19 as well as financial and logistical constraints in completing the survey.

In June last year, the government authorities announced that NSER survey was 95 per cent complete. Still, it took more than seven months for the government to finally announce on Thursday that the survey of 34.41 million households was finally completed.

A press release, issued by Ehsaas Programme, termed the survey completion a ‘milestone’ and hosted a lunch to ‘celebrate’ this ‘achievement.’ “I congratulate Ehsaas team on the successful completion of survey. This is great achievement as despite COVID-19, this survey has been completed after a lag of ten years,” the statement quoted Nishtar as saying.

“World Bank feels proud to be the technical partner in this game changer survey. This is not just Pakistan’s but also South Asia’s first digitally enabled socio-economic census.

It will be really transformative that the registry will now facilitate data sharing for social protection programs of federal government, provinces, government departments and development agencies,” Najy Benhassine Country Director World Bank said.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022