Federal Minister and Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) Chairperson Farzana Raja on Tuesday said despite facing various economic challenges, the BISP was committed to ensuring poverty reduction and equal rights among the poor and downtrodden segments of society, adding that the approach was imperative for overall progress of the country, as all provincial governments had sought help from BISP for sustainable development.
Addressing a seminar on ‘BISP: Making Difference in the Lives of the People’ at the BISP head office, Farzana said women empowerment had always been the top priority for Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and its leadership.
She said the BISP through ‘Waseela Haq Programme’ had provided loan amounting up to Rs 300,000 to the randomly selected beneficiary families, who were receiving the cash transfers to be validated through the programme eligibility criteria.
“All the 44 projects of BISP are achieved in a years record time of three and half years, while developed countries take decades in achieving and executing such programmes,” she claimed.
Seminar was attended by World Bank Country Director Rasheed Bin Masood, Iftikhar Malik, a delegation from Cambodia, members of civil society, intellectuals and a number of students.
Farzana said the BISP projects had obtained countrywide acceptance. “Over 35000 youth in Sindh have been provided basic health and education facilities through loans in a transparent way while Punjab has also sought our help,” she added.
She said being a catalyst of the socio-economic change in the society, launching of Waseela-e-Taleem could be termed as another landmark initiative of BISP for long-term poverty alleviation.
“The scheme has been envisaged to promote education among the children belong to downtrodden segment of society and hence help them out in breaking the vicious circle of poverty.”
Farzana Raja said many countries were following the BISP policies to remove poverty from their regions. She appealed the civil society and media to move forward for the welfare of poor people of the country, adding that he BISP could eliminate poverty at a large scale in next ten years.
She said it was expected that the efforts of BISP would ultimately lead the country towards the establishment of a social welfare with a more productive and educated population.
“And hence, it will get a dignified status among the comity of the nations as a modern, progressive and prosperous country.” Farzana announced that the disabled people would get special immunity in poverty scorecard so that they could become a part of BISP initiatives.
Speaking on the occasion, Rashid Bin Masood praised the efforts of BISP, saying the poverty scorecard survey conducted by BISP was an exemplary move in South Asia.
Rashid said the World Bank would continue its cooperation with BISP in removing poverty from the country.
