Ehsaas cash denied over ‘database error’

JHELUM: Errors have been found in the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) system as people in Jhelum, who say they are eligible for the Ehsaas Cash Programme, are being humiliated and denied payments.

It has been learnt that benefits of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Ehsaas Programme are being extended to the dead, while the living keeps waiting outside government offices for several days to receive the promised Rs12,000 cash assistance.

A resident of Jhelum said that when the Ehsaas Programme was announced, he had applied for the cash grant. However, the message to receive the money came in the name of his mother, who died nearly eight years ago.

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When he submitted a death certificate for his mother, prepared by the relevant Union Council, the staff at the Ehsaas Centre told him that their system shows that his mother is alive and that he should contact the local NADRA office. At the NADRA office, he was instructed to get a death certificate certified by NADRA.

NADRA Jhelum's staff have a complex system, and they just keep pushing people from here to there, he lamented, adding that after waiting in a queue under the scorching sun while fasting, he finally succeeded in getting a token.

However, the officer at the counter told him that this father's name was being written along with his mother’s name and was told to have it corrected.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 15^th, 2020.