Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation Dr Sania Nishtar on Thursday visited Choa Saiden Sahah and Kallar Kahar areas in Chakwal together with Secretary, Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Division and senior officials from NADRA to review the quality of services and facilities being established by NADRA at the special purpose counters for self-registration of Ehsaas beneficiaries so that no deserving person is left out from the Ehsaas programme.

She took round of facilities provided at the two self-registration sites, met with the staff and people present there and enquired about the current arrangements. Dr Nishtar took keen interest in getting their feedback as well to improve the entire registration process.

Currently, government has rolled out several social protection and poverty alleviation programmes in the field and many of them are in the pipeline to benefit various segments of the poor and disadvantaged population of Pakistan.

In order to identify the right population of beneficiaries for the right Ehsaas interventions, the national socio-economic registry (NSER)-digital survey is underway by BISP to ensure 100 percent coverage of the population. The survey will be completed this year in three phases.

To ensure utmost transparency in the survey process of Ehsaas programme so that no deserving citizen of Pakistan is left out from the social welfare net, NADRA has committed to mobilize fully equipped self-registration centres in all districts across Pakistan in three phases linked to the completion of survey.

In the first phase, NADRA is initiating a self-registration drive by the end of this month beginning with 15 districts across Pakistan including Chakwal where the survey is about to be completed. This self-registration drive will then be counter-verified keeping in view the integrity and transparency of the programme through data analytics. This self-registration drive is linked to the launch of the Ehsaas Kifalat programme in the last week of January 2020. Ehsaas Kifalat is the government's safety net programme through which it will give cash stipends to 7 million most deserving and poorest women all over the country.

During the visit, Dr Nishtar also met with dwellers of slums residing in the impoverished suburbs of Chakwal. As conversations unfolded, she discussed about the status of registrations of dwelling families with NADRA database and their accessibility to channels and sources of information locally available to them so that Ehsaas could extend maximum benefits to the most deserving.-PR