Punjab Social Protection Authority

Punjab Social Protection Authority as an autonomous body has been striving to achieve its mandate to provide an effective, comprehensive and efficient social protection system to the poorest of the poor. Punjab Social Protection Authority in its five-year journey has taken many initiatives by targeting the poor and vulnerable community of Punjab province for providing them with financial or in-kind unconditional and conditional assistance. The Authority was constituted with the mandate to formulate social protection policy for the province, to consolidate and coordinate all social protection initiatives, to ensure equitable allocation of resources, to formulate policies tor effective and efficient mechanisms, to formulate and execute policies for social protection covering food, education, health, social assistance, social inclusion and labour market regulations and to conduct research and formulate proposals for new interventions. and to monitor existing social protection programmes, etc . PSPA has provided cash assistance over 730,085 beneficiaries through three different conditional and unconditional cash transfer and asset transfer programs namely Zewar-e-Taleem, UCT for persons with disabilities and Brick Klin Program. Around 67,069 persons with disabilities (PWDs) are being financially assisted. The benefit amount is Rs. 1500 per month for the able-to-work PWDs and Rs. 2,000 per month to the PWDs who are unable to work. Potential beneficiaries are identified from National Socio-Economic Registry (NSER) database and households with Poverty Means Test Score up to 20 are targeted for registration. The PSPA Board has accorded approval to expand the Program’s outreach to more beneficiaries by increasing threshold of PMT up to 30. The Beneficiaries cash assistance who are incapacitated and unable to take up work owing to serious disability, illness or age are being given a long-term unconditional cash assistance.