Taking on poverty

Under the ‘transfer of assets’ segment of its much-heralded Ehsaas poverty alleviation programme, the PTI government has started providing free cattle, rickshaws and push carts to those living below the poverty line. The government also announced imparting to recipients the necessary training to turn the assets into sources of income. Initially, Rs15 billion worth of assets will be given out to as many as 176,000 families across the country. The asset transfer initiative is one of four segments of the Ehsaas programme – the other three being the provision of interest-free loans to entrepreneurs; monthly assistance to the poor under the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP); and vocational training.

The government must be commended for its efforts to focus on the plight of the poorest of the poor under both the asset transfer scheme and the programme as a whole. To be sure, the BISP has met with considerable success and the interest-free loan scheme is also yielding good results. But the government would do well to remember that as many as 60 to 70 million people – about 39% of Pakistan’s population – live below the poverty line. The required resources for the job are, therefore, too great and the available resources too meager to make a major dent in the poverty quagmire through such methods alone, as proven by the failures of previous poverty alleviation schemes such as the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF), launched in 1997.

It is imperative, therefore, for the government to focus on long-term measures such as population control and education to tackle the poverty problem. The country’s population continues to grow at an alarming annual rate of over 2 % and, in addition to education being of poor quality, public spending on it is only about 2.4 % of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the lowest in the region. Both must get urgent government attention if we are to equip people with the skills necessary to lift them out of poverty.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2020.

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