PAF gearing up to launch third phase of programmes
KATHMANDU, JUL 31 -
Sensing that its previous programmes have failed to realise desired results, the Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF) has planned to promote saving culture, capital formation, reinvestment and wealth creation among the poor in the next phase to ensure the sustainability of improved economic status of the poor.
An impact evaluation study carried out in 2010 on PAF programme showed that its programmes helped increased consumption capacity of beneficiary household by 49 percent, reduced food insecurity by 14 percent and school enrollment of children of those household by increased by 12 percent.
Likewise, the study also found that weight of children under five years old increased by 5-10 percent, access to agriculture, community forest and other agriculture related institutions and increase in their average income by 82.5 percent.
“Over the last six years, we could just provide immediate relief to the poor, uplifting their economic status,” said PAF Vice-chairman Janak Raj Joshi. “We will now focus on making people get more aware about capital formation, reinvestment and wealth creation for their economic sustainability.”
With the PAC preparing to launch its third phase of poverty reduction programmes, it has made strategic action plans to develop pocket areas to facilitate and promote production, market relations and economic growth of the poor communities. Beside the planning to bring special programmes for the deprived communities, it also aims at increasing the quality of nutrition and providing them with new ideas and technologies.
In its efforts to facilitate poverty alleviation programmes, the government has declared to provide identity cards to the households registered under absolute poverty line.
Likewise, it is trying to bring the community organisations into legal framework through registration process. The government is also seeking to form an oversight agency to monitor the projects of PAF.
The PAF officials are urging the government to make policy to solve the growing problems of the poor in the cities too. “We don’t have any policies yet to address the problems of urban poverty. There are no programmes and no funds allocated to address such issues,” Joshi noted.
Gayatri Acharya, a senior economist at the World Bank, observed that there are still some groups who need extra support.
“Though they are getting some money from the programme, the support is not effective enough to empower them,” said Acharya, who is also the Task Team Leader of the PAF project. However, she remarked that the programme has dissected the groups further to determine the PAF’s reach.
Currently, the PAF programme has involved 610,088 households from 20,268 community organisations covering 1,544 VDCs. It has reached 40 districts on regular basis and 19 districts with innovative programmes. Similarly, a total of 622,588 households have benefited from the project, of which 65 percent are hardcore poor, 25 percent medium poor and 8 percent poor category, while the others are from marginalised groups.
Over the last six years, the PAF has spent Rs 10.56 billion, of which 78 percent was directly invested in the community organisations, 16.2 percent went towards supporting organisations and 3.25 percent was spent on administrative costs. Of the total investment, 79 percent was allocated to projectes related to income generation, while 21 percent was allocated to infrastructure related sub-projects.
PAF Executive Director Rajbabu Shrestha said that the demand-driven programme, which has been running since past seven years, is mainly centred on the areas of social mobilization, awareness and empowerment of the deprived and the poor, creating employment opportunities, small community infrastructure development and capacity building.
Source: The Kathmandu Post
