BISP to expand project to two more AJK districts

Enrolment for the project is expected to start in 2018

ISLAMABAD: The apex social safety net programme in the country is poised to expand its education project to two additional districts of Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

The expansion will ensure that the Waseela-e-Taleem (WeT) project of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) operates in five districts of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), bringing an additional 26,816 students under the project.

The WeT financially supports the primary education of children between the ages of five to 12-years-old from families already benefiting from the BISP programme. The project aims to help enrol these children and keep them in schools by providing them with cash grants when they achieve certain milestones.

The expansion will see the project operate in Neelum and Haveli districts of AJK. The project already operates in Mirpur, Bagh and Kotli. There are 106, 193 beneficiaries of BISP in Mirpur, Poonch and Muzaffarabad.

According to a BISP official, enrollment for the project is expected to start in March 2018. It will see around 10,374 children in Neelum and 16,442 in Haveli enrol in the project.

He added that as many as 40,220 children are currently enrolled in the WeT project in AJK including 13,339 children in Bagh, 19,140 in Kotli and 7,741 in Mirpur.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 24^th, 2017.