Govt launches survey today to gauge losses to people’s income

Islamabad : In order to assess the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on Pakistani households, the government will launch a countrywide survey from today (Thursday) to ascertain losses on wellbeing of people especially on account of their employment and income.

According to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) announcement stated that the world is currently under the challenge to cope with the pandemic COVID-19 and the implementation of country wide lockdowns have affected the lives of the people and economies of many countries of the world.

Pakistan is also currently trying to cope up with this global challenge, however, it seems that the economy of the country will be shaken and its growth rate may severely be affected due to the closure of business and economic activities, decrease in imports/exports, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and remittances which resultantly also increase unemployment & poverty.

To access the impact of COVID-19 and its future implications, governments do not have any updated and representative nationwide data. The PBS as the key government agency responsible for providing official statistics for Pakistan has taken initiative to conduct a special survey for evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on the wellbeing of people which will give representative results at the national provincial level to inform the government on the magnitude/level of effects of this crisis on employment, food security and general wellbeing of the population for decision making.

For development finalisation of the questionnaire consultative virtual meetings were held with relevant stakeholders like FAO, World Bank, UNDP, WHO, and M/O Planning Development & Special Initiatives (PD&SI) questionnaire has been discussed in detail. The survey approved by secretary PD&SI, after getting approval it is sent to the data processing centre for designing of database applications accordingly.

The studying variables will ascertain impact on account of employment and income, income from second occupation, domestics & foreign remittances, rent, and other work, job loss/migration due to COVID-19, assistance from social protection programmes, remittances, food insecurity, water, sanitation & hygiene, coping strategies to tackle the shocks COVID-19, selected durable items owned by the household, practices during COVID-19 to mitigate the effects of COVID-19, reduced use of Health Services during COVID-19 and coping strategies adopted to tackle the shock.

It is presumed that urban part of the country is severely affected by the pandemic, therefore, more sample size is allocated to urban areas and big cities to get clear picture. Total sample size of the survey is 500 PSUs with 70% urban and 30% rural share i.e. 349 PSUs and 151 PSUs respectively. Further, urban part is further divided into Self Representative Cities (SRC) and other urban for better accuracy of the survey results.