ISLAMABAD: Chairperson of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), Farzana Raja said on Tuesday that the programme would seek Rs 100 billion allocation in the next budget 2011-12—as the number of beneficiaries of the programme has grown to 7 million from 4 million.
During a press briefing, Farzana Raja said increase in the number of beneficiaries was due to 2010 devastating floods across the country.
Farzana claimed that distribution of cash grant under the BISP was carried out in a transparent manner—and the donor agencies including WB, ADB, USAID and others placed their trust in the equal distribution of money under the programme. She said several foreign countries contacted Pakistan for initiating welfare programmes “similar to BISP in their respective countries.”
”Ensuring transparency in distribution of cash grant to poverty-ridden people, the US allocated $174 million in the Kerry Lugar Bill,” she said.
During the current fiscal year, 2010-11, the Ministry of Finance has released Rs 32.5 billion to the BISP against its budgetary target of Rs 50 billion.
The BISP chairperson said, “We need extra money after the completion of the ongoing Poverty Survey and we are expecting an expenditure of more than Rs 60 billion by the end of this fiscal year—because we are expecting 3 million new families to be registered under BISP.”
Farzana Raja said the government has decided to make the country a welfare state.
“In the very beginning of BISP, we had a target to financially assist 3.5 million families by providing cash grant worth Rs 1000 per month—but now this number has increased to 4 million while we are expecting that by June 30, the total number of families under BISP would reach 5 to 7 million”.
She said the BISP has enrolled 10,000 families under Waseela-e-Haq programme and the organisation is determined to providing the vocational training to 1.5 million families.
“Life insurance worth Rs 100,000 will be provided to all the families enrolled under the BISP. About 1 million people have been provided with insurance policy so far while additional 200,000 people would be registered by the end of June”.
“This programme has the constitutional protection because the BISP Bill was passed from both the Senate as well as the National Assembly.”
She said that through provision of cash grant, the government tried its level best to defeat terrorism in the country.
“The government is fighting against poverty and terrorism at a time,” she said hoping the government would succeed in its mission.
Farzana Raja claimed that BISP was making a progress irrespective of political affiliation. Regarding criticism from PML (Q) MNA Owais Laghari that the BISP fund was being using against him during his by-polls, she said an amount of Rs 553 million “has been disbursed to the beneficiaries of the family of Laghari.”
The Chairperson said that the poverty survey would be started in FATA on May 3. “The opposition should always be constructive not destructive,” she said.
She said that due to BISP, 10 million women have made National Identity Cards (NICs)—while for the first time in FATA, more than 100,000 women have been issued with computerised NICs.
“We have internal as well as external audit systems and a special monitoring evaluation system for the donors as we have asked the international borrowers that the government is ready to have a third party audit as well,” Farzana Raja added. The Chairperson said that for the first time in the history of Pakistan, mobile phone banking has been introduced through BISP while the project regarding the health insurance for the poor families would be launched soon.
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