In Pakistan, welfare has too often meant waiting. Waiting in long queues outside government offices, waiting for a name to appear on a list that someone else controls, waiting for dignity that never quite arrives. Against this backdrop, the launch of the Chief Minister Punjab Rahmat Card on May 1, 2026, deserves more than routine applause. It deserves an honest assessment.

Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif has initiated what is being described as Punjab's first structured financial assistance programme for widows and orphaned children. Backed by a record Rs5 billion allocation from the Provincial Zakat Funds, the programme will disburse Rs100,000 each to 50,000 beneficiaries. These are not abstract statistics. Behind each of those 50,000 accounts is a woman who lost her husband and, with him, her economic security, or a child who lost a parent and, with that loss, lost much else besides.

The scale of need in Punjab is vast, yet the Rahmat Card meets it with both purpose and precision. Female-headed households are disproportionately represented among the poor, partly because women's labour force participation remains stuck around 24 percent and partly because social structures offer widows few formal pathways out of poverty. For orphaned children,........

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