Islamabad : Cross-organisational committees are being made to ingrain the culture of collaboration within the Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Division (PASSD), which will primarily be engaged with all concerned organizations under the Ehsaas programme to ensure policy coherence, governance oversight, coordination and monitoring. Furthermore, an online portal will be set up to provide one-window visibility of all social safety and poverty alleviation interventions being carried out under Ehsaas to avoid duplication among implementing organisations.
Decisions to this effect were taken at the first meeting of the PASSD Ehsaas Implementation Group was held here Tuesday The meeting was called to accelerate implementation of Ehsaas and to discuss the roles, areas of execution, and monitoring mechanisms of organizations involved in implementation of the programme under the umbrella of PASSD.
The meeting was chaired by Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation Dr. Sania Nishtar, who explained that all organizations under PASSD were given roles that were mutually reinforcing so as to exploit synergy. While BISP is being mandated to run cash transfers, Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal’s is responsible for demand side social protection, whereas the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) owns responsibility for poverty graduation.
“I want to ingrain the culture of collaboration within PASSD, and hence cross-organizational committees are being made. In addition, there will be special emphasis on governance and integrity, which is why we have launched the Governance and Integrity Policy last week,” Dr. Sania said.
The meeting was attended by Secretary BISP Ali Raza Bhutta, Chief, Ministry of Planning, Development and Reform Shahid Naeem, Additional Secretary, PASSD Asadullah Khan, PBM’s Managing Director Aon Abbas Bappi, and heads and senior officials from PPAF, Trust for Voluntary Organisations (TVO), Centre for Social Entrepreneurship (CSE) and Centre for Rural Economy (CRE).
Ali Raza Bhutta assured the participants that BISP has all the technical infrastructure in hand to share database facilities with concerned stakeholders for identification and targeting of beneficiaries based on the Poverty Score Card (PSC). He shared details about the new National Socioeconomic Survey which is underway. Dr. Nishtar appreciated the supply centered role of BISP under Ehsaas as its national socio-economic registry survey will provide the basis for all policy interventions to be executed under Ehsaas.
While sharing his organization’s functions and jurisdictional roles, Aon Abbas Bappi said that under Ehsaas, as many as 150 schools for marginalised will be rehabilitated, 150 women empowerment centers will be supported, and 5 old people homes will be developed. “Guided by PASSD, efforts are underway to develop a policy on orphanages,” he added.