The five member work group will comprise officials of the Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF), the National Planning Commission (NPC), the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), the Ministry of Home and the Ministry of Local Development.[break]
The group has been given a deadline of April 27 to conduct surveys and formulate indicators to determine population living below poverty line, and create a draft of a directive on implementation of the program.
Based on the reports of the working group, the government will launch the program of identifying the poor and distributing cards to them, Janak Raj Joshi, vice-chairman of the PAF, told the meeting.
A meeting of the PAF held recently under the chair of Prime Minister Babu Ram Bhattarai had decided to distribute identity cards to people living below the line of poverty to ensure programs designed for the target groups are not exploited and resources are properly utilized.
Following this, a steering committee under Joshi and a technical committee under Uttam Narayan Malla, director general of the CBS, were formed.
The two committees have laid a plan of identifying the poor within three years of the launch of program and thereafter provide identity cards to them.
During Tuesday´s meeting Janak Shah, member of the NPC, floated the idea of formulating a law on identity card distribution among poor so that the program gets a legal teeth and compels future governments to give continuity to the program.
Yuba Raj Bhusal, member secretary of the NPC, on the other hand, asked the committees to conduct wealth ranking every two years and use it as an indicator to identify poor so there is authentic data on thenumber of people who join and leave the poverty list.
Others asked the committees to coordinate with different government agencies while collecting data so that resources are not wasted. Currently, different government agencies, like the PAF and NPC, conduct their own studies to create database on poverty situation in the country, wasting resources that could be channeled to other areas.
In this regard, Joshi, who chaired Tuesday´s meeting, asked the two committees to hold meetings with the Election Commission, the Ministry of Home and the NPC to strengthen inter-agency coordination.Currently, 25.2 percent of the population, or 6.7 million people, live below the poverty line and are unable to earn US$1.25 a day.
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