KARACHI: Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) has decided to scrutinize database of its beneficiaries to weed out fraud and identify bogus beneficiaries and this is being done in collaboration with National Database and Registration Authority. The government is planning to increase its income support program to reach some five million beneficiary households by June 2015 but skeptics say the government should first focus on screening out bogus and fraudulent beneficiaries.
An official of the BISP told Business Recorder on Thursday that separate teams had been formed to visit specific areas for the audit but so far the progress was not laudable. “We want to make the income support program transparent; otherwise the organization may lose support from international financial institutions like World Bank and Asian Development Bank,” he said.
On recommendation of the ADB and World Bank, a scrutiny of the BISP database was conducted during the PPP government but the present management is not satisfied with the current database too. “We have received some specific complaints about the fraudulent beneficiaries and we want to purge the system of bogus people,” he said, adding during the PPP government parliamentarians were given BISP forms to distribute in their respective constituencies and that created problems.
During the first poverty survey of 27 million families, approximately 7.7 million were identified as eligible for BISP benefits on the basis of income, of which 5.5 million possessed computerized national identity cards. The BISP is an income transfer program of the federal government that provides an annual stipend of Rs 18,000 to 4.8 million beneficiaries across Pakistan.
The official said BISP disbursed Rs 42 billion during the first half of the fiscal year ending June 30, insisting that the government did not miss the Rs 48.6 billion target set by the International Monetary Fund. He said the management was also planning to launch a fresh survey to identify new beneficiaries as there were chances of deserving people being missed in the first survey.
“The poverty has also increased in certain parts of the country in last couple of years due to numerous reasons including natural disasters so this warrants a fresh survey,” he argued. Chairperson of the BISP Marvi Memon has already launched a 100-day action plan with over 70 actionable items on the list to address some organizational challenges. She has also recently visited different regional offices of the BISP to get firsthand information about issues of the staff and beneficiaries in the area. She is also a media-savvy person and many in her organization think that she can fix the problems. “She is well-connected in the power corridors and we hope she will struggle to resolve problems of the needy and deserving at their door steps,” he said.
