National Socio Economic Registry of BISP to be asset for policy makers

Islamabad

As the availability of quality data is vital for effective policy making, the updated National Socio Economic Registry (NSER) of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) would be an asset for the policy makers as it would play a pivotal role in planning and designing development programmes.

This was stated by Minister of State and Chairperson BISP, MNA Marvi Memon while speaking in a training workshop organized by BISP for the master trainers for new poverty resurvey of BISP. She said that NSER would help government in devising better targeted welfare program by identifying the poorest of the poor.

The three day workshop, first of multiple training workshops, was conducted to train master trainers from SEBCON, one of the partner firms hired by BISP to conduct door to door survey in the pilot districts of new poverty survey. SEBCON will conduct survey in Cluster A districts from Punjab and AJK including Layyah, Chakwal, Faisalabad and Mirpur and Cluster B districts from KPK, Gilgit Baltistan and FATA including Lakki Marwat, Charsadda, Gilgit and  Mohmand Agency.

The survey in these districts will start in December end and will be completed by April. These master trainers will further train supervisors and enumerators for conducting survey. The workshop is being attended by Area In charges, Area Coordinators, Field Supervisors, Program Managers, Data Managers and Communication and Mobilization experts.

Addressing the master trainers, Chairperson BISP said that data collection is a sacred responsibility because through authentic registration, betterment can be brought in the lives of the poorest of the poor by making them part of social safety program. She urged the master trainers to perform their assigned duties with full commitment and dedication.

Highlighting the unique features of the NSER update survey, Chairperson BISP said that for the first time, scientific methods are being employed for data collection on such large scale in Pakistan. To overcome the inclusion and exclusion errors, Computer Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI) instead of Paper Assisted Personal Interviews (PAPI) approach is being adopted. The registration application has in-built checks and controls capable of identifying errors. Besides that blue tooth based synchronization of the enumerators and supervisors, is a quality control feature that will ensure error free registration. In order to ensure complete coverage of the population, computer based enlisting with the help of Google maps would also be utilized. Chairperson BISP also stated that BISP is one of the top social safety nets of the world.