ISLAMABAD: The Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) has failed to recover Rs2.1 billion from 125,714 fake beneficiaries despite the passage of two years, it was learnt reliably.
According to documents available with Pakistan Today, the high ups of BISP had formed a four-member fact-finding committee in July this year to probe the matter of 125,714 suspected beneficiaries, but the committee could not complete the enquiry so far.
These suspected beneficiaries had received Rs2.1 billion under the unconditional cash transfer programme and no recovery was made from the suspected beneficiaries till now. Sources further added that the amount was far more than Rs2.1 billion at first stage because the suspected beneficiaries were 1.6 million.
The number of beneficiaries had decreased to 0.563 million when NADRA verified the data from its system. It has further confined to 0.125 million when NADRA officials securitised the data with the new application.
According to sources, the management had given the forms to parliamentarians for identification of poor families at the initial stage, and it was disclosed that 2.2 million families were faked. The parliamentarians had distributed the forms to their diehard voters.
BISP has disbursed Rs784.14 billion since its inception, and each family is receiving Rs4,834 on a quarterly basis.
The Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) had detected this scam in 2015. Despite the fact that the matter had surfaced, the high ups did not prepare any strategy to avoid entry of ineligible beneficiaries. Furthermore, no action has been taken against those who were held responsible for wrong data of beneficiaries.
According to details, the management of BISP carried out Data Sanity Analysis in two phases from February 27, 2015, to April 28, 2015, and from April 29, 2015, to May 25, 2015. However, the data of 125,714 beneficiaries could not be matched with NADRA records.
Despite finding the data suspected, the high-ups of BISP paid unconditional cash transfer to beneficiaries, the documents added.
BISP secretary, while talking to Pakistan Today, said that accounts of 125,714 were blocked immediately and these doubtful beneficiaries were informed through field offices to submit detailed documents for review of their cases. In addition to this, a fact-finding committee was established to review the doubtful cases and the committee will complete its findings in next 2-3 months, he said.
