By Asad Cheema
ISLAMABAD: The World Bank (WB) Country Director Najy Benhassine congratulated Ehsaas on the successful completion of South Asia’s first digital National Socio Economic Registry (NSER) survey.
He was addressing the launching ceremony of the NSER survey chaired by Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection, Senator Dr Sania Nishtar.
He congratulated 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, he added.
“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 programs of federal government, provinces, government departments and development agencies,” he maintained.
In her opening remarks, Dr Sania said, “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 socio-economic registry dynamic, she said, adding, the registry will be regularly updated every four years.
She also congratulated the 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, she maintained.
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.
Julien Harneis, Resident Coordinator UNRC, Secretary Ismat Tahira, and senior representatives of Government Departments, Asian Development Bank, development partners and media officials joined the event.
