The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) has disbursed Rs 1.02 billion among beneficiaries through 392,000 debit cards during last 10 months of the current fiscal year. The BISP authorities also signed agreements with several commercial banks in order to further improve efficiency of the payment delivery mechanisms and expand the debit cards facility in over 100 districts by June this year. Enumerating the BISP’s achievements so far, A senior official told APP on Monday that Rs. 33.5 billion have been disbursed among 3.5 million recipients during the financial year under the programme.
Over Rs 1.49 billion have been paid through Smart Cards to 162,789 recipients and Rs 826.4 million to 120,000 million recipients through mobile phone banking. Rest of the cash transfers were made through Pakistan Post money orders. He said the number of recipients is expected to increase to 7 million after completion of the ongoing processing of data collected during the nation-wide poverty scorecard targeting survey. The survey, which will be completed by June 30, will cover over 27 million households. The task for data entry was entrusted to NADRA, which have identified 6.64 million beneficiaries so far. Regarding programmes for 2012-13, he said allocation has increased from Rs 50 billion to Rs 70 billion and identification of new recipient families will be focused. Arrangemnts will be made to make payments to the beneficiaries through Benazir Debit Cards in more than 100 districts. Waseela-e-Taleem will be launched in 20 districts while provision of life insurance cover to the bread-winners of additional one million recipient families will also be focussed, bringing the number of families with life insurance cover to 5 million, he added.
Under the Waseela-e-Taleem, the official said three million children will be imparted primary education during 2012-2016 and in this regard, the BISP has signed an agrrement with the World Bank for additional financing of US$ 150 million. The programme is scheduled to be launched in five districts and it will be later expanded to the rest of the country.
He said through 29 draws a total of 34,807 recipients have pre-qualified under the Waseela-e-Haq. He said Rs. 943 million had been disbursed among 6,281 recipients, 2,680 of them have started business. Under this programem, micro-finance in the form of returnable interest-free loans up to Rs. 300,000 are provided to the recipients, selected through a monthly computerized random draw, for setting up small business. Moreover, the official said under the Waseela-e-Rozgar, 964 persons have been trained so far while 4,044 persons are currently enrolled. It is expected that by June 30 this year the total number of trained persons will be approximately 20,000. This initiative has been piloted in Karak, Battagram and Bannu districts. Under the Waseela-e-Sehat, he said, during the year, additional 2.07 million families were provided life insurance cover, bringing the total number of families with life cover to 4.1 million. The other targets are provision of demand driven vocational and technical training in over 60 fields, to one person each from 150,000 recipient families, launch of Health Insurance in four districts (one in each province), and provision of micro-finance to 10,000 recipients.
