Dera Ismail Khan: This weekend SAPM Dr. Sania Nishtar is on the field visit to poverty stricken southern districts of KP including Dera Ismail Khan, Tank and South Waziristan. Today, she made a visit to Dera Ismail Khan and briefed local media on the ongoing Ehsaas survey in the district. She interacted with the local press and media to create awareness on the Ehsaas National Socio-economic Registry survey, and to answer their queries regarding the end-to-end digital survey. Later in the afternoon, Dr. Sania visited a survey site outside the district in Thoya Fazil area to inspect the digital registration of the local household through survey. She also checked data security and transparency checks built in the design, execution and monitoring of themcomputerised survey. Overseeing the survey driven registration process, she spent time with the surveyed household and described the purpose and apolitical nature of the survey intervention. She also met with enumerators of survey team to gain insights on the quality of data collection and profiling at the grassroot level for future modifications. She also interacted with street hawkers in the outskirts of the district.
“The survey is currently 22 percent complete in Dera Ismail Khan and is progressing smoothly to accomplish soon. Nationwide, the Ehsaas survey on poverty profiling stands 61% complete and will be concluded before June 2021”, the statement quoted Dr. Sania as saying. “To alleviate poverty in southern districts of KP including Dera Ismail Khan, Ehsaas is focusing on provision of the much needed social protection to poorer, widows, orphans, special persons, labourers and students though Kafaalat, Nashonuma, Waseela-e-Taleem Digital, Amdan, Interest Free Loans, Langar and Undergraduate Scholarship programmes. For the purpose, Ehsaas has launched a new computer aided survey in the region for precise identification of deserving households under multifaceted Ehsaas programme aimed to alleviate poverty and enhance the socio-economic conditions of underprivileged population in the region”, she added.
Under the new digital approach, the socio-economic profiling of households is being carried out through teachers in KP who have been trained to act as enumerators in designated enumeration areas. The field teams are going door to door to collect the socio-economic data of households through an android based application. To ensure security, the data collected from the households is submitted to central database archives through digitally developed system for the survey monitoring.
Dr. Sania specially thanked the teachers for getting fully engaged as responsible citizens in the survey exercise and performing the duty of household data collection with full integrity and obligation. She also advised masses to extend full cooperation to survey teams and share the CNIC numbers when the survey teams visit them. Also, she thanked the provincial government, district administration and police department for full cooperation and support in the survey. Dr. Sania also described the opening of registration desks linked to the completion of the survey in each district for self-enrolment of left out households. To facilitate deserving households in self-registration, Ehsaas registration desks will be launched at Tehsil levels in the region.
Connecting with the masses in southern districts of KP, Dr. Sania also appeared in the Radio Pakistan’s Ehsaas special programme and apprised listeners about an ongoing Ehsaas programmes including survey in KP. Tomorrow, she will meet the district administration and local jirgas tomorrow in Tank and Wana to brief them on Ehsaas interventions.
