PM Imran reveals 'Data4Pakistan' portal as effort to tackle poverty

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday 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.

The premier said the Data4Pakistan portal would help the government spend development funds justly and as per people's needs. The powerful people in the leadership had unfortunately spent development funds in their constituencies, he added, and that that widened the gap between the rich and poor.

Lamenting the previous governments' policies and practices, the prime minister said ground realities were not considered in budget allocations at that time and more than half of Punjab's budget was spent only on Lahore, making it much more developed than other cities in the province.

PM Imran also referred to Mianwali's Isakhel tehsil and Dera Ghazi Khan district, both of which were ignored by the past governments despite being underdeveloped in terms of health, education, and infrastructure. His government would focus on equal development of all the areas, he added.

The prime minister said the portal would help identify the areas that were in most need of funds, besides finding other vital statistics about issues being faced by the local people. It was the first step in finding necessary ways and means to fight poverty, he noted.

Data4Pakistan would also help in higher-level policy-making 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 or other influences.

Earlier, SAPM on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Dr Sania Nishtar had said the Data4Pakistan portal — the first initiative of its kind in the country — provided open and public access to a spatial interactive portal that had poverty estimates for every district in Pakistan, along with over 120 development and policy indicators.

She said the portal currently had six rounds of district poverty and development data for the 2004-2018 period. This portal would be a very valuable resource for federal, provincial, and district level policymakers, for decision making, she added.

Dr Nishtar said the Data4Pakistan portal — which had interactive maps to help users visualise and compare districts on poverty and two additional indicators — was developed in collaboration with the World Bank.

The innovative portal used data produced by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) as part of its Social and Living Standards Measurement Surveys, as well as the multiple indicators produced by the provincial bureaus of statistics, she explained.

The SAPM said the indicators currently available in the portal included a range of demographic, health, education, and employment statistics as well as access to key services like water, sanitation, electricity, and gas. It also provides a number of gender parity indices at the district level, she added.