By Minahil Makhdoom
ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Sania Nishtar Sunday said that the payment process under Ehsaas Emergency Cash Programme would start from Wednesday to support the vulnerable segments of society, affected due to lockdown amid Coronavirus threat.
Addressing a press conference here, Dr. Sania Nishtar said, the Ehsaas Emergency Cash Programme was launched to support the daily wagers and piece-rate workers after lockdown in the country due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis. The programme will benefit the deserving people from all the four provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan, through allocating quota as per census.
Punjab will contribute Rs 700,000 and Sindh Rs 250,000 from their own budget in this programme, she said. Under an aggressive communication campaign launched recently to benefit four million people, the deserving ones can send SMS to 8171 to check their eligibility status. They will be informed on how to collect money, if they are found eligible.
If they are not identified in the database, they will be directed to contact their respective district administration, she said. She said there will be three types of responses to people’s SMS seeking cash assistance, which include eligible, ineligible, and contact to your respective district administration.
She said employees of provincial and federal governments were not eligible for the assistance. “Presently we have database of employees of provincial and federal governments, Railways, Pakistan Post, and BISP, while data of autonomous bodies will hopefully be available in next 24 hours,†she added.
She said an SMS response would have to go through the wealth profiling test before becoming eligible for the assistance.
She said existing Kafalat beneficiaries, who were getting regular cash transfer of 2000 rupees per month, would be given additional one thousand rupees; hence, they too would get a tranche of 12,000 rupees covering four months. She said under this category 4.5 million people would be benefited.
