Dear Friends,
Pakistanis get very low level of formal social protection from the two major protection system i.e., traditional work-based social security and a national Income Transfer Scheme/Institution started in 2010 by the name of Benazir Income Support Program. [BISP] Pakistan introduced Social Security in 1965. In the current shape the employer pays 5 % of the secured workers salary to the provincial Social Security Institutions [SSIs], which provide comprehensive health care to the worker and his family including parents and some other small-time benefits. The health coverage produced by the SSI is found to be better as compared to the national Health Insurance Program. [SPRC 2020] The real problem however is that hardly 5 % of the workforce in Pakistan is registered with SSIs. The introduction of BISP was expected to significantly help in realizing the goal of effective social protection across the lifespan as imagined by ILO.

In Pakistan, BISP benefit is given at the household level to the household below a certain score on the basis of a survey/PMT. Pakistan had the second National Socioeconomic Registry [NSER] during 201-2022 and recently has introduced dynamic registry. The Health Insurance is also linked with PMT and BISP has introduced a few Conditional Cash Transfer Programs too over the past 15 years.

BISP was presented as a solution to poverty and food security. Lately the adaptive social protection has been adopted as an overarching theme. It currently has extended its coverage to around 9 million families out of the total population of 245 Million. The significant errors of exclusion and inclusion and disbursement inefficiencies notwithstanding, the current transfer is $ 13 per family per month, whereas the government announced minimum salary is around $ 135 and average starting salary in practice is around $ 72. BISP Transfer is so low that an average household could not help procure food for more than 10 days.

Pakistan’s ongoing financial crisis with 30 % plus inflation last year has rendered its Income Transfer program to a small-time hunger avoidance program. In other words, Pakistan does not have a proper social protection system at this time worth its name. And the IMF induced austerity measures are still unfolding, with record high energy rates with the government failing to discover a reliable way to pass on targeted subsidy to the worst hit. However, with each spike in inflation or shortage of the staple food or high energy bills, the federal and provincial governments now come up with ‘welfare packages’, which worked out in higher allocations than the BISP’s total annual transfers last year. Pakistan is not unique in this new ‘wave/politics of welfare’ in South Asia. Pakistan is at the brink of getting a new IMF Program which aims at reducing public expenditure, which would further increase unemployment and informal economy. The chances are that the social protection needs would significantly increase in the coming years coupled with limited fiscal space. The best bet for Pakistan is to better align the work-based social security with Income Transfers and make the businesses and the employees also contribute more towards the development of a more robust social insurance system in Pakistan as a backbone of the social protection regime. This can only happen if the government is dissuaded from going headlong on practicing a new politics of social welfare which we are calling the third welfare track, leaving both the Social Security Institutions and BISP in disarray. Instead of integrating the two, the government is going for the ‘set pieces’ of welfare, particularly in Punjab. Social Protection Resource Centre is seeking to expand the Pakistan Alliance for Social Protection, which it established in 2020, supported by 15 organizations and a large number of experts. We would like particularly the youth to take interest in such initiatives as it is more about their future.

One way to join us is to join our decentralized research project aimed at understanding the unorganized sectors and the informal economy labour practices better so that a shared understanding of the preferred way forward among all the relevant stakeholders could be facilitated, particularly in terms of future beneficiary reactions and perceptions about different possible social protection regime/packages/schemes. As SPRC undertakes its work on social protection, disabilities and elderly care on a probono basis, we always welcome such volunteers who share our Social Policy vision and are willing to make a difference. Drop a word here and we would reach out to you.

آٔئیں آج کے مبارک دن کے حوالے سے یہ طے اور تہیہ کریں کہ ہم دنیا کے نہیں بلکہ علم کے طالب بنیں گے
آنحضرت صلعم نے فرمایا ہے
منھو مانِ ھٌما لا یشبعاں
طالبٌ الدنیا و توقیراتِھا
طالب العلمِ و تَدبیراتِھا
ترجمہ۔
دو حریص سیر نہیں ہوتے
طالب دنیا کا اور اس کی ترقیوں کا
طالب علوم کااور ان کی تدبیرات کا
Let us make it a day of a better choice. Stay blessed you all.