Daily Times

Lahore: SAPM Dr. Sania Nishtar opened the Ehsaas survey in Lahore today that will be accomplished by June 2021. Addressing a media briefing, Nishtar said that an ongoing survey for the Ehsaas programme is currently 70% complete in the country, adding that 7 million deserving households are being brought into the fold of Kafaalat through the fully transparent survey.

“Ehsaas survey is being executed in Lahore based on a hybrid approach. With the transparency and integrity at its core, the survey is being rolled out in collaboration with provincial government of Punjab, Punjab Education Department and district administration Lahore. Ehsaas partnering firm, SDPI will provide technical assistance to 1,350 teachers from provincial education department Lahore who are being trained to serve as enumerators”, said Nishtar while describing the survey approach. She then continued, “Fully funded by the government of Pakistan, Ehsaas survey is hundred percent free of cost and voluntary in nature. Enumerators are collecting household data on the android tablets to determine the eligibility of surveyed households regarding the unconditional and conditional cash transfers under Ehsaas. A parallel desk-based enrolment mechanism will also be put in place later to register those who are missed out in the survey.”

Ehsaas Survey will cover each corner of the country till June 2021. Through this entirely apolitical survey, a new database is being established after 10 years to address the needs of the most disadvantaged households, particularly those in the informal sector. Kafaalat payments to new wave of deserving households through the survey have also begun yesterday. Newly identified deserving families will be registered till June in a phased manner after determining their eligibility and will be paid out of biometric ATMs, retail outlets and campsites of partnering banks; Habib Bank and Bank Alfalah.

Further, Nishtar appealed to the disadvantaged households to get themselves registered in the survey and cooperate with survey teams in order to benefit from Ehsaas stipends. She also urged the public to share the correct socio-economic data with enumerators when they come at the doorstep.

Later in the day, Nishtar sat with students of University of Education in Lahore who were awarded Ehsaas Undergraduate Scholarship in 2019-20 and sought their feedback on the scholarship policy. The consultation created an open platform to exchange ideas on how youth from lagging areas can increasingly benefit from the merit and need based scholarships of Ehsaas. Dr. Sania also responded to several questions of students with regard to Ehsaas Undergraduate Scholarship programme.

Ehsaas Scholarship recipients from Lahore appreciated that the scheme has financially supported deserving students to access undergraduate education regardless of their income, gender or area. In 2019-20, nearly 1,708 students (51% girls) from University of Education were awarded the Ehsaas scholarship. For the current year 2020-21, as many as 2,685 students have applied for the scholarship before the online portal closed for new applications on Nov 30, 2020. The scrutiny of freshly received applications is currently in progress and subject to satisfactory academic progress, the awardees of last year will continue to receive Ehsaas scholarship throughout their undergraduate degree programme.

Last year, in Punjab overall, 7.704 million beneficiaries were provided with Ehsaas Emergency Cash worth Rs. 92.4 billion; 1.59 million deserving women benefitted from Kafaalat; 1.5 million children were supported under Waseela-e-Taleem Digital; 868,627 borrowers (48% women) received interest free loans of Rs. 30 billion and 24,480 students (51% girls) from low-income backgrounds were granted Ehsaas Undergraduate Scholarship last year.