Khalid Sibtain
Islamabad: The third meeting of Steering Committee for Ehsaas Rashan Riayat took place today at the Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Division (PASSD). Senator Dr. Sania Nishtar, SAPM chaired the meeting.
Members of the steering committee discussed and approved the adoption of new supply driven model for implementation of Ehsaas Rashan Riayat programme to ensure that the programme benefits 20 million deserving families.
“In order to reach even more beneficiaries and maximize impact of Ehsaas Rashan Riayat for up to 20 million families, Ehsaas is now introducing a new “supply driven” model to enroll all Ehsaas Kafaalat beneficiaries to the Rashan Riayat programme”, said Dr. Sania.
Further, she added, “Under this new model, all families currently surveyed in the Ehsaas National Socioeconomic Registry database and under Proxy Means Test 44 will be automatically made eligible for the Ehsaas Rashan Riayat, without them having to register for the programme.”
All members of eligible families will be sent an SMS. Any member from the family with a CNIC and SIM registered in the name of a family member can then avail the subsidy. After the first transaction, this family member’s details will be locked and only they will be able to conduct future subsidy related transactions for the family.
Under the demand-based model, the Ehsaas Rashan website has received Rs. 1.5 billion hits since the launch of programme. Overall, the programme received 33 million registrations under the two phases. The programme has been ongoing since 31st January 2022, with nearly 4.25 million families from phase-I of registrations having been verified and made eligible to avail the targeted commodity subsidies at more than 12,000 participating Kiryana and utility stores across Pakistan. In addition, 23,027 Ehsaas Rashan Riayat stores have been physically verified.
For phase-II of the programme, over 15 million applications have been received via Ehsaas 8171 SMS registration service. These applications will undergo further verification checks for assessing their eligibility under the programme.
Through Rashan Riayat, a targeted subsidy of 30% a month will be granted to 20 million deserving families on the purchase of flour, pulses, cooking oil and ghee. To checkmate abuse and corruption, the programme has been made fully digitized.
Muhammad Ali Shahzad, Secretary PASSD; Ismat Tahira, Secretary BISP; Captain (Retd) Saeed Ahmed Nawaz, Additional Secretary PASSD; Syed Muazzam Ali, Additional Secretary BISP; Ahmed Jan Malik, Joint Secretary PASSD; Naveed Akbar, Director General, Ehsaas Conditional Cash Transfers; Meer Anwar, Director General Technology, Ehsaas joined the meeting alongside Additional Secretary Industries and Production; Additional Secretary Finance; CEO Punjab Social Protection Authority; and senior officials and representatives from Punjab Secretariat; Social Welfare Department KP; and National Bank of Pakistan.
Ehsaas Rashan Riayat is s a precision-target system of subsidies delivery focusing on deserving beneficiaries to provide financial assistance for the purchase of essential commodities at a discount through digitally processed transactions. Fully digitized systems built for the programme will pave the way for the government to switch from untargeted to targeted commodity subsidies.
