Khotang, July 9

Preparation to distribute identity cards to people living under the poverty line is in the final stage in Khotang.

According to Information Officer Prabin Pokhrel at Poor Household ID card Distribution Programme, Khotang, the work of distributing ID cards to the poor households is in its final phase at the two municipalities and eight rural municipalities of the district.

The ID card distribution is set to launch programmes targeting impoverished households for providing social security. Preparations are on to distribute ID cards to 65,612 members of 9,255 households.

One officer and two assistant officers each from all ten local levels received training for ID card distribution on Saturday and yesterday.

Trained staffers have been sent to their respective local levels with necessary materials. Information Officer Pokhrel said, “We have deployed staffers with training and necessary materials to distribute the ID cards.”

Secretariat of District Coordination Committee Poor Household Support Coordination Board said that the district was home to 32,803 extremely poor, 10,682 medium poor and 13,127 normal poor people.

Identified through Proxy Means Test methodology, the extremely poor will be provided red, medium poor with yellow and normal poor with blue ID cards.

District Coordination Committee Chief Babi Chamling said the poor were classified into three categories on grounds of income, expenses, house, fuel used for cooking meals, electricity, state of drinking water, geographical location and access to state facilities, six years ago.

The process for distribution of ID card to the poor households began a year ago after the Cabinet gave its nod to the final list of poor households approved by Poor Household Support Coordination Board.