PAF to distribute identity cards for poor soon

The government has asked Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF) to prepare for the distributing of identity cards for poor.
The government's much-ambitious Immediate Action Plan had targeted to distribute the identity cards to the poor under the national poverty line.
The 39th meeting of the Fund chained by the Prime Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai decided to distribute the cards. The managing committee meeting also formed two committees — direction and technical — to carry out the task under the leadership of vice president of PAF Janak Raj Joshi and director general of Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) Uttam Narayan Malla, respectively.
According to the CBS, around 25.16 per cent of the total 26.6 million populations — meaning a quarter of the total population — is under poverty line as they earn less than Rs 54 in a day. The national poverty line has been calculated on the basis of consumption that a person needs 2,220 calorie per day.
Though, the experts are of the opinion that the graduation of a poor to non-poor is only possible through micro-enterprises and skill based programmes that can generate income, the government has been planning for the identity card since long. "Though identification will help the government to reach them with programmes to help them graduate out, distributing cards is humiliating and encouraging not to work," according to the development experts.
However vice chair of the fund Joshi opined that the committees will explore on the criteria to identify poor in national context before distributing the cards.
The meeting has also approved expansion plan of the fund to 15 additional districts, apart from current 40 districts, where it is working on.Meanwhile, PAF is also preparing the exit strategy. "The fund will prepare a draft Act of an umbrella organisation of the community organisations," he said, adding that the Act will pave the way for the PAF to make exit strategy slowly making the umbrella organisation of the community organisations more responsible for the poverty reduction.