Poverty alleviation funds being spent in six UCs, claims AKRSP

CHITRAL, Jan 26: The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) has selected six union councils for poverty alleviation with the financial assistance of Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF). In a briefing here, the regional programme manager of AKRSP, Engineer Sardar Ayub, and project manager of the PPAF Imtiaz Ahmed said they worked on two-pronged strategy in the area to help the poor increase their per capita income. They said ultra-poverty was addressed by transferring assets to the poor to enable them earn their livelihood and raise their living standard and full financial assistance was extended to 732 households. Thirty-five different sectors have been identified for launching self-employment schemes out of which more than 10 were concerned with women. Extensive training was also provided to the beneficiaries of the project to launch and manage their small scale business on scientific lines to derive maximum dividends and thereby reduce the intensity of poverty, they said. In the selected union councils of Chitral-II, Mulkhow, Koh, Oveer, Khot and Yarkhun, the poor and ultra-poor were identified by poverty score card system as designed by the World Bank with the active participation of the local community, they claimed. Regarding the second prong of the strategy, they said that the poor families with low brackets of income were helped by providing technical and vocational training to its youth so that they could find jobs in the market. For this purpose, they said youth were trained in different trades of heavy machines operation, vehicles driving, civil survey, civil draughtsman, and auto cad and computer operations. In this connection, 352 youth were provided with training of six months duration in the technical training centre of National Logistics Cell (NLC) in Rawalpindi.–Zahiruddin]]>