Pakistan’s “Ehsaas,” program is one of the most comprehensive welfare program ever undertaken by the government, says former British Civil Servant Edmund Nigel

• If one tackles the challenges at the source, whether it be health, education or skills training, it will have major health and economic benefits in the years to come.
• The immediate outcome of Khan’s policies may not gather widespread public support but it will positively turn the masses and their outlook towards the state policies in the long run.

PM Khan’s vision to change the land of the pure into a welfare state does not employ going back to that point of time and to comply with that particular notions but it purely means good governance and to envision a collective thought into the nation.

He mentioned quite often in his public addresses that the vision of his government was to raise the underprivileged and subjugated people as it is the due responsibility of the state to care for them.

Moreover, it is a well-established thought that the immediate outcome of Khan’s policies, more often in their infancy stages, may not gather widespread public support but it will positively turn the masses and their outlook towards the state policies in the long run.

Edmund Nigel Ramsay Crisp who is the former British senior civil servant in the Department of Health, public policy analyst and Co-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health has written in commendation of Pakistan’s work to build a sustainable welfare state.

The award-winning former bureaucrat praised the new initiative of ‘Ehsas’ program as one of the most comprehensive welfare programs ever undertaken by a national government, with an underlying ambition to ensure social safety. He also called the program “wide-ranging,” and “ambitious.”

He attributed Pakistan’s Program of Lady Health Workers saying that the idea took off and spread through low and middle-income countries. The community health worker model was so successful that many years later it was adopted by high-income countries, for instance in New York State now, a similar program works with the well-established network.

Edmund Nigel also mentioned the community-based approach to tackle the issues. “If you tackle the challenges at the source, whether it be health, education or skills training, it will have major health and economic benefits later,” he uttered.

The government’s Ehsas Program mainly comprises three components: providing the poor or unemployed with the interest-free loans, skill development of the poor, and to transfer the small assets to the people such as livestock, sewing machines, and other types of equipment related to agriculture.

The figures for poverty are already gruesome in Pakistan and the rapidly growing population growth further aggravating the situation. More people from rural locations are socially as well as economically poverty-stricken.

Also See: Government To Provide Free Assistive Devices Under Ehsas Program

According to the chairperson of Ehsas initiative Dr. Sania Nishtar an amount of 42.65 billion has been allocated for the program and thousands of interest-free loans would be distributed among the poor nation-wide.

Around 16.2 million people are likely to benefit from the National Poverty Graduation Program. Another salient feature of the Ehsas program is the vision to provide free assistive devices to differently-abled persons and to allocate the special 1 percent quota for them to make these 2.5 percent people as part of policies in Khan’s Naya Pakistan.

How do you see the government’s initiative to raise the people out of poverty by taking initiative at the local or community level? Share your views in the comment section below