BISP recovers Rs1.4m from its employees

Says it fired 39 of its officers and officials for misuse of cash transfer facility

ISLAMABAD:

The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) has issued a clarification with regard to a news report published by The Express Tribune on August 7 about the Auditor General of Pakistan’s recent report unveiling huge financial irregularities in the cash transfer programme for the poor.

According to the BISP spokesperson, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has recovered over Rs181 million from 814 government employees – of Grade-17 and above – who had been illegally receiving the stipend.

The spokesperson said other federal and provincial departments have also recovered an amount of Rs0.64m from their staff of Grade-16 and below.

He said the BISP has also taken disciplinary action against 39 of its Grade-17 to Grade-16 officers and officials – who were benefitting from the cash transfer facility – and removed them from service while also recovering Rs1.42 million from them.

The Express Tribune, however, stands by its reporting that the BISP has managed to recover only a meagre amount of the money illegally received by ineligible people.

Read: AGP detects financial irregularities in BISP

According to the Auditor General of Pakistan’s 2020-21 report, the BISP administration had recovered only Rs900,000 from its officers while the entire amount illegally received by all sorts of government employees or their immediate family members amounted to Rs23.13 billion.

The report said during the audit of the BISP cash transfer in the financial year 2019-20, it was observed that 55,383 government employees, pensioners and their families from Grade-1 to -20 continued to receive the stipend regularly.

According to the report, 8,500 officers and employees received the money directly while 46,000 employees continued to receive the stipend in the name of their spouses.

The report said four judges also received a total of Rs690,000 from the BISP while eight officers of Grade-20 received Rs831,000 either directly or in the name of their spouses, 61 officers of Grade-19 received Rs7.4 million and 83 officers of Grade-18 received more than Rs10 million.

The BISP is a federal unconditional cash transfer poverty reduction programme, which was launched in July 2008. It is the largest single social safety net programme in the country with nearly Rs90 billion distributed to 5.4 million beneficiaries in 2016.