Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP)’s contractor partner National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) has discontinued paying millions of outstanding dues to thousands of its employees through out Punjab, Pakistan Today learnt on Thursday. According to details, the BISP had awarded the NRSP an assignment (on contract) to hold the “Ghurbat Survey” across Punjab.
The NRSP received a hefty amount from the BISP, hiring thousands of employees with salaries between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 under the head of data collectors, supervisors, forward campaigners, monitors and auditors to complete the survey in several districts of Punjab including Lahore, Kasur, Sheikhupura, Gujrat, Gujranwala, Mandi Bahauddin, Rawalpindi and Muzaffar Abad. The NRSP commenced the “Ghurbat Survey” in September 2010 and completed it in February 2011.
During the survey the NRSP started withholding 20 percent salaries of the employees as guarantee money that was to be paid after the completion of the survey but is still outstanding. Muhammad Hassan and Nadeem Khan, affected employees, told Pakistan Today that the NRSP management deliberately charged the employees with different pretexts. Earlier, the management had been paying salaries through cheques which were presentable in Islamabad only while the bank had been deducting Rs 400 on encashment under the head of “other station cheques”, said the employees. “Now the NRSP has once again announced August 15 as the payment date for dues. We hope it does not leave us high and dry this time,” said the employees.