According to the world bank report, Ehsaas Program ranked number four globally on social protection in terms of the number of people covered and 3rd globally in terms of percentage of population covered amongst those that covered over 100 million people.
The World Bank released a report on “global social protection responses to COVID-19” and it is a partnership effort involving 18 co-authors and a large number of contributors. This report is called the “living paper” and it presents a 650 page volume.
This report focuses on that how planning, implementing or completing social protection measures in the context of the pandemic are done by the states and countries.
The report states that there has been “an exponential growth in social protection measures between March 20, 2020 and May 14, 2021 and that a total of 3,333 social protection measures have been planned or implemented in 222 countries or territories”.
The Government stated that it delivered cash stipends of Rs.12,000 to 15 million households last year. It means 100 million people or half the country’s population is benefited by the cash, representing the largest and most extensive social protection intervention ever in the history of the country.
As per the global report, Pakistan’s Ehsaas also ranked high amongst the programs that did well in terms of planned versus actual coverage rates.
The report demonstrated that there were four ways to identify and register the new beneficiaries, the first of which was to simply add households to the list from an existing social registry.
Pakistan used new digital approach to register combine emergency assistance for the identified vulnerable with demand-based support for the 8171 SMS short code service and web portal were launch to reach the targeted beneficiaries. Data analytics-enabled eligibility ascertainment, using unique national identification numbers and drawing on the National Socio-economic Registry and wealth proxies (travel, taxes, billing, assets ownership data and government employment status).
Pakistan adopted an innovative hybrid targeting approach to enroll new beneficiaries. Requests were sought through 8171 SMS short code service and web portal.
Pakistan becomes a role model for the other developing countries by using digital approach to identify new beneficiaries’
