ISLAMABAD: World Bank (WB) Country Director Najy Benhassine has congratulated Pakistan on the successful completion of South Asia’s first digital national socioeconomic registry (NSER) survey for Ehsaas, the flagship welfare programme of the government.
He was speaking at the launching ceremony of the NSER survey, chaired by Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Senator Dr Sania Nishtar.
Speaking on the occasion, the WB country director said: “I congratulate the government of Pakistan and Ehsaas on achieving this historical milestone. The World Bank feels proud to be the technical partner in this game changer survey. This is not just Pakistan’s but also South Asia’s first digitally enabled socioeconomic census. It will be really transformative that the registry will now facilitate data sharing for social protection programmes of federal government, provinces, government departments and development agencies.”
In her opening remarks, Dr Sania said: “As part of Ehsaas strategy, we have just concluded a new national socioeconomic registry of 34.41 million households. We did various validations of the data to precisely identify the real poor. Tehsil level Ehsaas Registration Desks have also been opened all over the country to keep the national socioeconomic registry dynamic. Further, the registry will be regularly updated every four years.”
She then added: “I congratulate Ehsaas team on successful completion of survey. This is great achievement as despite COVID-19, this survey has been completed after a lag of ten years.”
Ehsaas has successfully accomplished a countrywide national socioeconomic registry survey, which includes households’ information in terms of geographic data, demographics, socioeconomic status, education, health, disability, employment, energy consumption, assets, communications, agri-landholdings, WASH, livestock etcetera.
Ehsaas conducted a door-to-door computer aided survey all across the country to gather data about the socioeconomic status of households. With the conclusion, this will be the most reliable data set for the use of public sector institutions, think tanks and development agencies for designing social protection and poverty alleviation programmes.
