Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) Chairperson and Minister of the State and MNA Marvi Memon has said that BISP has embarked on another milestone of updating National Social Economic Registry (NSER) and the new poverty survey would be conducted using the state of the art technological tools. She said that all efforts would be made to document the best directory of the poor.
Marvi Memon stated this during her visit to a registration site for NSER update at Union Council (UC) Kholian Bala of district Haripur on Saturday.
Memon urged the deserving families to come forth for registration. She highlighted that no forms are being distributed for this purpose, as registration is being done via modern tools (computer tablets) and is free of cost. The public should stay vigilant of the fraudulent elements that tend to mint money in the name of BISP resurvey, she added.
Haripur is the first pilot district where a poverty resurvey has been launched. Desk approach is being used in Haripur where people can self-register themselves. The self-registration has started at four union councils of Haripur which include Rehana, Bandi Sher Khan, Barkot and Kholian Bala. The self-registration approach will be tested in four districts namely Haripur, Bahawalpur, Nasirabad and Sukkur. Self-registration approach will be the first step in the direction of building a dynamic NSER, where households will be able to register themselves throughout the year, something not possible in the current system of NSER.
NSER is a registry of 27 million households across Pakistan, created after a nationwide poverty survey of 2010-11. NSER has the complete information on the socio-economic conditions of individual households. This database is used for design and implementation of various social protection policies and programs by not only the federal and provincial governments, but also by the NGOs and international development partners.
Memon ensured that the resurvey would be free of political interferences and no deserving person would be left out. The new poverty survey will cover each and every part of the country and there would be no limiting factors such as security or inaccessibility.
During phase I, in addition to desk approach in four districts, the door-to-door approach will also be adopted in 12 other districts; enabling BISP to determine value-for-money (VFM) for both the approaches of targeting. This would help in the decision making regarding the approach to be adopted in the national rollout in the remaining districts of the country.
Other pilot districts include Mirpur, Charsadda, Lakki Marwat, Chakwal, Layyah, Faisalabad, Bahawalpur, Jacobabad, Sukkar, Thatta , Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), Qila Saifullah, Kech, Nasirabad and Mohmand Agency (FATA).