Aiming at alleviating poverty and uplifting the living standards of the poor, Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) was established by the people’s government in July 2008. Within a short span of time, BISP has made remarkable progress by providing much-needed relief to over 4 million poor families, including IDPs, flood affectees and bomb blast victims all over Pakistan and more than Rs 85 billion have been disbursed to the BISP beneficiary families whose number may increase to over 5 million by the end of June 2011.
The BISP has achieved international recognition due to its technology-based and transparent systems; the World Bank, the UN, the US and UK governments and Asian Development Bank have appreciated its performance and have provided financial and technical support to it. Cash grants of Rs 66 billion were disbursed among 2.2 million beneficiary families in the first phase of the programme while Rs 13.5 billion disbursed among 1.2 million families after the poverty survey.
Waseela-e-Haq is basically designed to promote self-employment among women beneficiaries or their nominees to improve their livelihood. It offers Rs 300,000 long-term interest-free financial assistance to randomly selected beneficiary families, to be recovered in 15 years. Waseela-e-Rozgar, another initiative of BISP, aims to empower a female beneficiary or her nominee to become economically independent through acquiring demand-driven vocational skill and technical education.
It offers recognized training courses leading to certificate-based skill as well as non-recognised training such as in-house or product-based training under the BISP.
