BISP's NSER to enhance country's capacity to cope with economic hardships.

ISLAMABAD -- The launch of first ever dynamic National Socio-Economic Registry (NSER) in the history of Pakistan will enhance the country's capacity to cope with the disasters, pandemic and economic instability by adopting more effective data collection mechanism of the poor households.

The NSER is a landmark in Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP)'s history. It is linked with National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) for data collection as well as validation and can allow swift registration of six distinct types of information for the registry which shall be validated through NADRA.

The six different types include registration of missed out households, eligibility appeal cut off for poor but ineligible households with widows or elderly people, roster updates for regular changes such as marital status, inclusion of new born, changes or correction in education, health, disability and employment information of household members, gauging information on households impacted by disasters and their re-registration, reassessment of ineligible households for last two years and reassessment of eligible or beneficiary households for last three years.

The registry provides registration and information update opportunity to all citizens. Since this registry is linked with NADRA, only NADRA authenticated information can be registered or updated.

Besides registration centres, an app will also be launched through Google play store which will facilitate the already registered households in changing or correcting their information. While, mobile registration is also planned for far off areas which will register household information at their door steps.

It is pertinent to mention here that the NSER which is the scientifically based real-time data collection was launched by BISP to identify deserving families and households across Pakistan and to provide them targeted cash assistance.

The BISP was launched in 2008 as the largest social safety net programme in the country with an aim to provide financial assistance to households living below the poverty line. While initiating the program,me the foremost challenge was the unavailability of reliable data on poverty.

Although the programmes like Bait-ul-Mal and Zakat were functional; however, they too did not possess any...