KATHMANDU, JAN 21 -
The government's programme to provide state privileged identity cards to people under the poverty line this year is most unlikely to materialise as the responsible agencies have not done any significant homework to make it happen.

The government's populist programme aims to provide concessional access to health, education and the public distribution system to such identity card holders.  "Such card holders will also get first priority in getting goods subsidised by government agencies," states the budget of the current fiscal year.

The Finance Ministry said that the job of framing the policy and the modalities of distribution have been given to the National Planning Commission (NPC). However, NPC secretary Yubaraj Pandey said that the NPC had no programme to provide such identity cards in this year's calendar. "Our main priorities are preparing another interim plan and streamlining the budget for another year with the next interim plan," he said.

The NPC has started preparation for the next interim plan which will start from the next fiscal year.

He, however, said that there had been some rounds of discussions on the issue.

Pandey added that giving identity cards to the poor could help attain the goals of the targeted programmes for the poor.

Senior economic advisor at the Finance Ministry Keshav Acharya said that the NPC had been given the responsibility of doing the necessary homework to execute the budget. "I have also been unable to continue following up the issue regularly," he added.

Secretary of the board of the Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF) Raj Babu Shrestha said that PAF was computerising the records of households under the poverty line in their programme areas that covers 40 districts currently.

"The government will use our database to provide identity cards to extremely poor people," he said.

He added that distributing state privileged identity cards was largely impossible given the current level of homework. PAF is an agency under the NPC.



neglect of the poor

• 
      No homework to provide state privilaged cards to the poor


• 
      Card holderes to get concessional access to health, education and public distribution system


• 
      No programme of card distribution in NPC’s annual callender


• 
      MoF says responsibility rests on NPC


• 
      PAF says it has been computerising list of poor households

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