Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation Dr Sania Nishtar on Thursday announced that names of 820,165 undeserving be
neficiaries
were struck off from the list of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) as their standard of living was above the criteria set for the poor people. Addressing a press conference, she said that the decision to remove the names from th
e BISP list had been taken after the approval of the federal cabinet. During the criteria review, she said, some aspects
were looked into, for example, it was ascertained whether the family of a be
neficiary had any motorcycle or car or whether a
spouse was a government employee. Out of the total 820,165 be
neficiaries removed from th
e BISP database, 14,730
were government employees, including employees of railways, post office and BISP despite the fact that the facility was not meant for the p
eople working in government departments. According to the data, she said, 127,826
were those whose
spouses
were government employees or employees of the above mentioned departments. She said 153,302
were those who travelled abroad once and 195,364
were those whose
spouses travelled abroad once. The number of be
neficiaries who travelled abroad more than once stood at 10,476. Similarly, 166,319
spouses travelled abroad more than once. Th
e BISP removed 692 p
eople from its database because they owned one or more than one vehicle, while 43,746
were removed from the list because their
spouses have one or more than one car. A person who can pay monthly telephone bill of Rs 1,000 is not eligible to get monthly stipend from the programme and, therefore, 24,546 p
eople were removed for falling into this category. Similarly, 155,767 persons
were excluded from the database as their
spouses paid Rs 1,000 or more mobile phone bill. For applying for passports via executive centres, 666 be
neficiaries
were excluded and 580
were removed as their
spouses did the same. A total of 36,970 p
eople were expelled from the list of BISP be
neficiaries because three or more than three members of their family paid executive fees for obtaining computerized national identity cards. To a question she said that BISP would save about Rs 60 billion annually due to exclusion of undeserving be
neficiaries from the list. She said that more deserving p
eople will be included in the list throughout the country after fulfilling the criteria laid down by th
e BISP. She said that her department had initiated the action as per the rules and laws against th
e BISP employees who enlisted themselves in the be
neficiaries list. She said that as per the approval of the cabinet, women living on the Line of Control and having CNIC would be provided financial assistance under Kafalat programme. She said that the financial assistance under BISP had been linked with the rate of inflation. The Special Assistant said that in future, the registration of the deserving p
eople in the be
neficiaries list of BISP would continue. Registration centres would also be established in every district of the country to facilitate the deserving p
eople for enlisting them in th
e BISP list, she added.