Self-employment scheme: Distribution, sans monitoring plan, begins today

Transport Secy says work underway on policy to ensure compliance with rules and regulations.

LAHORE: The provincial government is set to distribute 50,000 vehicles under a self-employment programme from Saturday (today). However, a plan to ensure that the vehicles are used only for the purposes stated in the scheme is yet to be finalised. 

The recipients are required to use the vehicles as public transport under the Apna Rozgar (self employment) Scheme announced in October 2014. Route permits for this purpose can be obtained from the Transport Department or the Regional Transport Authority.

However, route permits were obtained for only 1,945 (about 10 per cent) of the 20,000 vehicles distributed by the government under a similar scheme during 2012-2013.

Transport Secretary Shaukat Ali said work was still underway on devising a policy to ensure compliance with rules and regulations mentioned in the scheme.

The 50,000 beneficiaries were chosen for the scheme after a draw from amongst 152,000 applications.

District-level committees had been formed to ensure that the candidates met the criteria set out under the scheme.

These committees were tasked to check their assets and to ensure that none of them was a defaulter with any bank.

The criteria originally set for the beneficiaries also included an age limit between 21 and 35 years and a minimum education till 10th grade.

It was later revised to an age limit of 40 years and basic literacy as most of the 152,000 applicants had failed to meet the two conditions.

A 15-day driving training was organised for beneficiaries by the provincial Police Department.

Rs25 billion were allocated for the project in annual budget for the scheme.

The cost was later adjusted to Rs31 billion.

The 2012-13 scheme had cost Rs7 billion.

Vehicles would be distributed amongst the various districts of the province on the basis of their population. However, southern districts would each get an additional 10 per cent allotment on top of the allocation on the basis of population.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 21^st, 2015.