BAHAWALPUR: The pilot Benazir Income Support Prgramme’s (BISPs) poverty survey has been launched in Bahawalpur, after Haripur, where self-registration has been adopted to get data from the public.

BISP Chairperson Marvi Memon said this in her visits to registration sites in the Bahawalpur city on Tuesday.

She said counters would be set up in the 104 union councils (UCs) of the district to deal with the estimated case load of 467,527.

So far, the registration has begun in four UCs - UC 1, UC 11, UC 15 and UC18 - where 59 percent of the expected case load has been registered. The registration would be completed by January 2017 in the district.

She visited the sites and got feedback from officials and visitors. Complaints can be made at BISP Hotline No 0800-26477.

The chairperson acknowledged the support from the local government in terms of logistics, security and social mobilization and stated the BISP with the National Database and Registration Authority and local governments was working for the efficient and timely completion of the resurvey.

She urged the public whether rich or poor to participate in registration as the data would be used by other government organisations.

The BISP will use the data to select families for financial assistance while other organisations may utilise the data for planning and designing development programmes.

The pilot phase of re-survey included 16 districts. Ms Memon said that desk approach was being employed in four districts while in 12 districts, the door-to-door survey would be utilised.

LOADSHEDDING: The power loadshedding has been intensified in the city and suburbs for 12 to 18 hours a day despite the claims of a slight improvement in the generation by the hydel system across the country.

The previous scheduled loadshedding hours here have been replaced with unscheduled disruption in the power supply almost in all the localities of the city.

Local Multan Electric Power Company expressed their inability to commit the strict observance of the scheduled loadshedding timings.

Published in Dawn October 5th, 2016