BISP launches poverty survey, says official

‘Largest survey of its kind’ will be conducted in two phases

ISLAMABAD: After a five-year hiatus, the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) has started updating the National Socio Economic Registry (NSER), a database containing complete information about the socioeconomic status of over 27 million households across the country.

NSER Deputy Director Muhammad Abu Bakar told The Express Tribune on Monday that it was one of the largest poverty surveys of its kind aimed at gathering updates and accurate information regarding the socioeconomic status of Pakistani people.

Information regarding health-related issues, skills of individual household members, food, utilities such as electricity, gas, fuel, microfinancing, access to justice and education, employment, etc, will be gathered through the NSER updates, he said. The survey was last conducted in 2010-11.

“Since 2010-11, a lot of changes have taken place as people have moved to other places, their financial statuses have been changed, there will be either an increase or decrease in their health problems among others. Therefore, this NSER update will help get the latest information about them,” said Abu Bakar.

In 2010-11, he said, the entire process of updating the NSER was completed at a cost of Rs6 billion. “This time it is estimated to cost Rs7-8 billion.”

Abu Bakar said the update activity has been started from Haripur and gradually it will cover all districts that have been targeted after Ramazan. Sharing details, he said the NSER update would be carried out in two phases – a pilot phase and the national rollout.

In the pilot phase, 16 districts – four in Punjab, three each in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Balochistan and one each in Gilgit-Baltistan and AJK – and one agency of Fata have been shortlisted based on various parameters, he said. “Twelve districts will be covered through a door-to-door census approach.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2016.