- Not only must the fraudulent be punished, but also their ill-gotten gain recovered
The Benazir Income Support Programme started by the PPP regime in 2008, with the support of the Department of International Development of the United Kingdom, was the first ever single social safety initiative in the country envisaging unconditional cash transfer to the poor families. The programme was meant to provide financial support to widows and divorced women heading a family without a male earning member, whose income was less than Rs 6000 per month. The programme was widely appreciated as a credible step towards poverty alleviation. That is why the PML(N) and the present PTI government not only owned it, but also made enhanced financial allocations for the programme. Conceptually indeed it was an irreproachable undertaking.
However it is regrettable to note that the programme has been extensively misused. Dr. Sania Nishtar, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation and BISP Chairman, undertook an appraisal of the programme and unearthed a massive misuse of the initiative. According to her, out of 4.3 million current beneficiaries 820,165 had been disqualified for being ineligible and fraudulently claiming cash handouts from the scheme. They also included 14,730 government employees. Among them are 5423 officers of grades 17 to 22 who got their spouses included in the list of BISP beneficiaries. The Cabinet approved the delisting in December 2019.
Nevertheless, it is satisfying to note that the BISP Chairman is not only dedicatedly engaged to purge the fraudulent elements from the list, but also is trying to make sure that punitive actions is taken against those who misused the system besides recovering the money that was fraudulently received by them.
The PTI government has raised the quarterly grant from Rs5,000 to Rs5,500 for the beneficiaries under the Ehsas Kifalat Programme of the BISP and also taken measures to secure due rights for the deserving people only and making the whole procedure for inclusion in BISP apolitical. According to Dr Sania Nishtar, the government would now additionally provide Rs 8.6 billion for the poverty-stricken individuals. The government has also decided to include 216 villages located alongside the restive Line of Control in the Kifalat Programme, another milestone of the Ehsaas Programme. The people of these villages were the most deserving due to their frequent economic losses suffered due to cross border firing from the Indian side of the border. The efforts by Dr Sania to ensure cash payments under BISP only go to the deserving families and the expansion of the scheme to other domains deserves appreciation
She revealed that four Grade-17 officers of BISP who had got their wives fraudulently enrolled as beneficiaries, using their position in the organization, had been dismissed from service and an amount of Rs.440,196 recovered from them. Show cause notices have also been issued to officers and employees of the federal and provincial governments involved in the scam. The fraud was detected during a reexamination of the survey with the help of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA. The disqualification criteria included the travel history of the member, vehicle ownership, the availing facility of executive services for passport or National Identity Card (NIC), and service in government sectors.
Perhaps it would be pertinent to have an incisive look into how the lists of the beneficiaries were finalized. During the first year the recipients of BISP cash transfer were identified and selected by parliamentarians through a process of recommendation. Reportedly each parliamentarian received 8000 forms to distribute in his or her constituency. Selected individuals underwent an eligibility verification process through the National Database and Registration Authority. A final list of eligible families was generated and sent to the postal service. Funds were disbursed from the Treasury directly to the postal service and then delivered to the female head of eligible households. However in April 2009, the process for identifying and selecting eligible families through recommendations of the Parliamentarians was discarded. It was replaced with a World Bank-approved Poverty Scorecard criterion. Under this, the families were identified through a proxy means test in which families are required to answer 13 questions regarding assets and expenses in a survey. Ostensibly the inclusion of the ineligible persons occurred during the time when the recipients were selected on the basis of the recommendations of the parliamentarians, which indicates that they mostly benefitted their own voters and family friends.
In this regard, it has been pointed out that there was a disproportionate number of families were receiving BISP aid in geographic areas where the ruling Pakistan People’s Party dominated. For example, in the home town of former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in Multan, the number of people receiving BISP payments was double than in Lahore which was a stronghold of an opposition party. In other areas of Punjab where also opposition parties dominated, had the lowest ratio of eligible families— 1974 for every 100,000 people; versus 6829 families for every 100,000 people in Sindh, the then ruling party’s stronghold. Beneficiaries also complained that the postal service charged an additional Rs. 100 to RS 200 for each delivery of payment before the introduction of the smart card. The foregoing facts indicate the extent of moral degradation, corruption and political favouritism in the society. The government must take punitive action against all those who fraudulently received payments from BISP and also recover the filched money from them.
Recently, BISP has expanded to include several special initiatives. The Waseela-e-Haq program empowers women through the provision of small loans. A vocation training programme, Waseela-e-Rozgar, offers members of eligible families up to one year of professional training. The Waseela-e-Sehat programme provides financial assistance specifically for obtaining basic health care. BISP will launch its first programme that conditions cash payments on schooling. The Waseela-e-Taleem initiative will require families receiving cash payments to enroll children between the ages of five to 12 to enroll in primary education. BISP also provides cash payments for emergency relief efforts. These payments are similar to the payments received by low-income families, but are distributed to families affected by terrorism, war, and natural disasters such as earthquakes.
The PTI government has raised the quarterly grant from Rs5,000 to Rs5,500 for the beneficiaries under the Ehsas Kifalat Programme of the BISP and also taken measures to secure due rights for the deserving people only and making the whole procedure for inclusion in BISP apolitical. According to Dr Sania Nishtar, the government would now additionally provide Rs 8.6 billion for the poverty-stricken individuals. The government has also decided to include 216 villages located alongside the restive Line of Control in the Kifalat Programme, another milestone of the Ehsaas Programme. The people of these villages were the most deserving due to their frequent economic losses suffered due to cross border firing from the Indian side of the border. The efforts by Dr Sania to ensure cash payments under BISP only go to the deserving families and the expansion of the scheme to other domains deserves appreciation.
