According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), Pakistan is currently trying to cope with this global challenge, however, it seems that the economy of the country will be shaken, and its growth rate may severely be affected due to the closure of businesses and economic activities, decrease in imports/exports, the foreign direct investment, and remittances, which resultantly also increase unemployment and poverty.
Govt to Conduct a Survey to Evaluate the Impact of COVID-19
To access the impact of the Covid-19 and its future implications, governments do not have any updated and representative nationwide data. The PBS as the key government agency responsible for providing official statistics for Pakistan has taken initiative to conduct a special survey for evaluating the impact of the Covid-19 on the wellbeing of the people, which will give representative results at the national, and provincial levels to inform the government on the magnitude/level of effects of this crisis on employment, food security, and general wellbeing of the population for decision making. For development, finalisation of the questionnaire, consultative virtual meetings were held with relevant stakeholders such as the FAO, the World Bank, the UNDP, the WHO, and the Ministry of Planning Development and Special Initiatives (PD&SI), and the questionnaire has been discussed in detail. The survey approved by the secretary PD&SI, has been sent to the Data Processing Center for designing of the database applications accordingly. The variables include; employment and income, income from second occupation, domestics and foreign remittances, rent, and other work, job loss/migration due to the Covid-19, assistance from social protection programmes, food insecurity, water, sanitation and hygiene, coping strategies to tackle the shocks the Covid-19, selected durable items owned by the household, practices during the Covid-19 to mitigate the effects of the Covid-19, reduced use of health services during the Covid-19, and coping strategies adopted to tackle the shock. The survey will be conducted in four provinces, the AJ&K and the G-B. The survey results will be nationally representative with urban and rural levels, and also at overall provincial level. It is presumed that urban part of the country is severely affected by the pandemic; therefore, more sample size is allocated to urban areas and big cities to get a clear picture. Total sample size of the survey is 500 PSUs with 70 percent urban and 30 percent rural share i.e. 349 PSUs and 151 PSUs respectively. Further, urban part is divided into Self Representative Cities (SRC) and other urban for better accuracy of the survey results. Two indicators, namely, average household consumption and food insecurity (taken from PSLM survey) used to compute sample size of the survey. Finally, sample size of 500 sample PSUs has estimated using average households consumption variable. Two-stage stratified random sample design has adopted for the survey. At first stage, sample PSUs have selected using systematic random sampling with the PPS method. Number of households inside each PSU as per sampling frame has been considered as measure of size (MOS). At second stage, 12 households have selected using systematic random sampling technique with equal probability in urban and rural areas. Fieldwork will be completed in 10 days all over the country, 12 households will be covered in rural areas, and 12 households from urban.
