ISLAMABAD – Prime Minister Imran Khan has expressed the government’sdetermination to alleviate poverty from the country.
Addressing the launching ceremony of Data4Pakistan Portal in Islamabad onTuesday, he said no country can progress if significant portion of itspopulation lives in poverty.
He said a civilized society is known by the standard of living of its poor.
Imran Khan said this is the first step in finding necessary ways and meansto fight poverty.
He said this portal will help identify the areas which are in most need offunds, besides finding other vital statistics about issues being faced bythe local people.
Criticizing the policies of previous governments, the Prime Minister saidground realities were not considered in budget allocations at that time andmore than fifty five percent of Punjab budget was being spent ondevelopment of Lahore alone while other provincial cities were ignored.
He said we will focus on equal development of all the areas.
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The Prime Minister said Data4Pakistan will also help in policy making atthe higher level as well as allocation of budget.
He said the earmarking of the budget will be on need and merit basis,without any political or other influences.
Earlier, Special Assistant on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Dr.Sania Nishtar said Data4Pakistan, the first initiative of its kind in thecountry, provides open and public access to a spatial interactive portalthat has poverty estimates for every district in Pakistan, along with over120 development and policy indicators.
She said the portal currently has six rounds of district poverty anddevelopment data, covering the period 2004-2018.
This portal will be a very valuable resource for federal, provincial anddistrict level policymakers, for decision making.
