Poor ignored in BISP, allege
Chitralis
'Dawn'
CHITRAL, Nov 9: The local elders, including leaders of Pakistan
People’s Party, have complained that government has ignored poor in
distribution of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) cards in the
district.
“The BISP cards have been allotted to undeserving persons in Chitral
while needy and poor have been ignored,” they told Dawn. They said
that last year BISP had conducted a survey in the district through
Aga Khan Rural Support Programme to identify poor but needy people
were deprived of getting cards.
Shah Murad Baig, district information secretary of PPP, said that
people of Chitral had pinned great hopes on the much
trumpeted survey and expected a fair distribution of cards for
financial assistance but all their hopes were shattered as the
revised list contained names of undeserving people. “The gross
anomalies in the list of BISP beneficiaries are likely to bring a
bad name to the government, which is trying to use it as lever to
augment its popularity among the people,” Mr Baig said.
The district president of People’s Students Federation, Qazi Waqar
Iqbal, also expressed similar views and demanded of the government
to cancel the list.
“I will meet Farzana Raja, chairperson of BISP, to bring into her
knowledge the mass anomalies in the list,” he said.
Maulana Afzal, a social worker, said that unjust distribution of
BISP cards disappointed people of Chitral and they lost
confidence in the programme. He complained that Pakistan Baitul Maal
already stopped its assistance to the poor as its funds were
diverted to BISP.
“I know a man, who has recently retired from a bank where he served
as an officer. The names of his wife and daughter are also included
in the BISP list,” said a local.
Abdul Haq, former nazim of Broze union council, said that people
suffering from abject poverty were excluded from the list while BISP
cards were distributed among influential people having political
affiliations.
He also criticised the survey team of AKRSP for posting fictitious
values in the data-base of the survey system to benefit certain
people.
Regarding the survey process, an official of AKRSP, when contacted,
said that they had just gathered the data in the given format of
BISP that was designed to measure accurately the magnitude of
poverty in every household in the district.
--'Dawn', 10 Nov 2011
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