PM launches Rs42.65bn interest-free loans, skill training scheme for poor

--‘Govt will divert all the money coming from the sale of Benami properties to anti-poverty initiative’

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan Friday launched the National Poverty Graduation Initiative to steer the poorest household out of poverty by providing them interest-free loans, assets transfers and vocational and skills training.

Held at the PM Office, the launching ceremony

of the initiative marked the distribution of cheques of varying amounts of
interest-free loans to help the poor establish or uplift their small scale
businesses to support their living.

Education and Professional Training Minister Shafqat

Mahmood and Special Assistant to PM on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation
Dr Sania Nishtar also attended the ceremony besides a huge number of
representatives from collaborating organizations and beneficiaries of the
programme.

The ceremony coincided with 391 similar cheque

distribution events held across the country where 86,151 interest-free loans
worth Rs3.02 billion were given out to the deserving persons.

Addressing the gathering, the prime minister

said Ehsaas programme was driven from the model of Medina state that had given
the concept of modern welfare state and now being pursued by all the developed
countries in the west.

He said the government had already increased

the budgetary allocation for Ehsaas to Rs200 billion that would further be
enhanced in the future.

He also announced that the government would

divert all the money coming from the sale of Benami properties to the
anti-poverty initiative.

“I am confident that the money generated after the

sale of Benami properties will exceed the national budget.”