Kathmandu, March 17: The Ministry of Cooperative and Poverty Alleviation is not implementing its plan of distributing identity cards to identified poor households soon. Minister for Cooperative and Poverty Alleviation Hridayram Thani has said poor households indentified by the Ministry would have to wait for the time being to obtain identity cards until funds for the same was managed.
The Ministry has decided to withhold the distribution of identity cards to poor for the time being in the context of the government yet to manage economic resources toward that end, he said.
The government in the budget of fiscal year 2073-74 BS, allocated Rs 50.5 billion to the Poverty Alleviation Fund and Rs 31 billion to the Youth Employment Fund as part of its efforts at reducing poverty.
The statistics unveiled by the of Poor Households Support Board Secretariat show that 391,987 households in 25 districts are below the poverty line. The data from Bajura tops the poverty chart with district poverty rate slightly exceeding 64 per cent while Tanahun has the lowest rate ending at 14.8 per cent.
The other identified poor districts are Bhojpur, Khotang, Siraha, Sindhuli, Ramechhap, Rautahat, Gorkha, Baglung, Kapilvastu, Arghakhanchi, Lamjung, Rukum, Rolpa, Baridya, Dolpa, Jajarkot, Jumla, Kalikot, Mugu, Humla, Bajhang, Accham and Kailali.
According to the Board, the number of extremely poor households stands at 188,000 in Nepal. RSS
