Daily Times

The Ehsaas Saylani Langar has been opened in Peshawar in front of the main bus terminal. Old Haji Camp Adda is an ideal place for Langar as labourers and daily wage earners congregate to earn daily wages. A large number of buses and wagons move from this busy terminal for various areas of KP, Punjab and other major cities of the country. The government of KP collaborated with Ehsaas to provide this site. Chief Minister KP, Mehmood Khan along with Dr. Sania Nishtar, Prime Minister’s Special Assistant on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation and Chairman Saylani Welfare International Trust, Maulana Bashir Farooqui inaugurated the Langar that serves cooked food twice daily to 1,200 people.

The government of KP collaborated with Ehsaas to provide the site for Langar. This whole set up has been established in a public private partnership with a zero cost to the government and the partnering trust (SWIT) will manage the production and distribution of food. Dr. Nishtar thanked CM KP, Mehmood Khan and Chief Secretary KP, Kazim Niaz for their collaboration in providing the space for Ehsaas Langar and also the collaboration in excellent payment arrangements for Ehsaas Emergency Cash.

During the visit to Peshawar, Dr. Sania Nishtar together with Chief Minister KP also visited the Ehsaas Emergency Cash distribution site at Government High School No. 1 in Peshawar to observe how the disbursements were being made to labourers, piece rate workers, daily wagers and workers who have been laid off by factories and employers owing to COVID-19 lockdown.

Later on, Dr. Nishtar met with officials of KP Administration to discuss ways of deepening Ehsaas program. Dr. Nishtar also paid a surprise visit to Ehsaas payment site in Swabi and interacted with people who had come to withdraw emergency cash. Interacting with beneficiaries, Dr. Nishtar commented, “There is a certain percentage of people who have not collected the cash handouts yet despite being eligible and we are trying to ascertain why have they not collected their payments.” She then continued, “Over the weekend, we conducted a survey and found out that many eligible beneficiaries had not received their payment messages from 8171 which is why, SMS messages were resent to all those beneficiaries. I have come here to see, if the payments have begun to all those deserving whom we have sent repeated messages to ensure that they withdraw money at the earliest”.

Till today, Ehsaas has disbursed Rs. 138.09 billion emergency cash among 11.404 million deserving households.