[Nepal] Poverty Alleviation Fund helps 54,000 households

from The Rising Nepal

Officials of the Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF) said Wednesday that a total of 54,000 households have been benefited during the one and half year period of its establishment.

The PAF served households to gain access to resources for their productive self-employment, encouraging them to undertake income generation activities and infrastructure development, they said.

Meanwhile, almost 1,200 community organisations were working with the PAF in 42 districts in the country, said Raj Babu Shrestha, executive director of the PAF speaking at the opening session of a three-day workshop on �Experience Sharing for Future Programming� organised by PAF.

The PAF was established in 2060 BS aiming at seeking the participation of poor and marginalised groups of the society to run various poverty alleviation programmes and providing necessary assistance and funds to the organisations involved in similar works.

The target beneficiaries of the PAF are the marginalised communities�the poor women, dalit and the indigenous.

The PAF envisages procedures by introducing demand driven approach for complete local ownership and a direct fund flow mechanism thereby ensuring that maximum resources reach the grassroots level.

According to the data of central Bureau of Statistics-2005, thirty five per cent poverty prevails in rural areas; ten per cent in urban and three per cent in the capital city.

Ram Krishna Tiwari, secretary of the National Planning Commission expressed commitment that the government would continue to support poverty alleviation programmes till the time poverty prevails in the country.

�The experiences collected and shared from the beneficiaries outside the valley will help chart out future strategies for poverty alleviation.�

He also said that the government has given top priority to poverty alleviation in the current 10th five-year development plan.

Dr. Kenichi Ohashi, country director of the World Bank said that the Bank would continue its support to the PAF, as the development projects should not be halted even in the transition period.

He stressed the need to continue PAF�s initiatives in the changed political situation. �The PAF should go ahead with its business as usual.�

Krishna Prasad Sapkota, president of the Federation of District Development Committees said that the policies and their implementations should be oriented towards economic and political inclusion besides talking about only the social inclusion approach in the changed political context.

Rights based approach should be adopted, while launching poverty alleviation programmes instead of a demand driven approach implemented by the PAF, he said.

Pertaining issues like process and modality of mobilizing revolving funds at community level, modality of livestock insurance, long term sustainability of community organisaitons, landless target communities, strengthening the capacity of local NGOs and building owenership feeling amongst the community members are being discussed at the workshop.