Prime Minister Imran Khan launched the Ehsaas District Development Portal “Data4Pakistan” in a bid to tackle poverty in the country.
Addressing the launching ceremony, PM Imran said the government was committed to alleviate poverty as Pakistan’s progress and prosperity was directly linked to uplifting the poor and downtrodden segments of the society.
“It is my belief that a country where there is an ocean of poor people and few rich cannot make progress,” he said, adding that a civilised society cared for its poor and was analysed by how the poor were living, not through the ways the rich spent their lives.
Data4Pakistan would also help in higher-level policymaking as well as budget allocation, he said, adding that the earmarking of the budget would be on a need and merit basis without any political considerations.
Earlier, addressing the launch ceremony, Special Assistant to the P.M. on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Sania Nishtar said the Data4Pakistan portal was developed in collaboration with the World Bank and would prove a valuable resource for federal, provincial and district level policymakers.
She said Data4Pakistan was the first initiative of its kind in the country, and would provide open and public access to a spatial interactive portal that has poverty estimates for every district in Pakistan, along with over 120 development and policy indicators.
The portal currently has six rounds of district-level poverty and development data, covering the period between 2004 and 2018. It includes interactive maps that allow the user to visualize and compare districts on poverty and two additional indicators, including but not limited to water and sanitation and housing characteristics.
The interactive portal also allows for detailed information on individual districts, with pop-ups, and users can focus in on subsets of provinces or districts using a simple drop-down list. Custom maps with data chosen by the user can also be downloaded and printed.
Nishtar said the Ehsaas program was dedicated to fostering the creation of a welfare state by countering elite needs and leveraging data and technology to create precision safety nets and poverty alleviation solutions. The launch of Data4Pakistan was another important step to foster evidence-based decision-making, she added.
