Where'd the money go?

The National Assembly standing committee on Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety on Friday grilled the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) over complaints that money donated for flood victims had not yet been distributed to the people it was intended for.

The committee members sounded alarms that a large number of people in Balochistan and Sindh were complaining that they had not received the payments.

“What kind of donation is this when the victim himself is unaware of the money being distributed to him?” the panel’s chairperson asked.

He said that victims in Sanghar had not yet received the much-needed money while sharing that he had himself accommodated some of them in his house.

“How can I believe that BISP reached out to the flood affectees in boats and helped them?” he further asked while committee members demanded the flood-affected areas be re-surveyed.

However, BISP authorities present in the meeting maintained that they could not be sure whether all the victims have been paid and told the committee members that the BISP had only received Rs70 billion from the government against their demand of Rs103 billion.

“A total of Rs70 billion was given to the flood victims by the Finance Division, which has been distributed," they said.

The body was informed that more than 270,000 people have been given money out of whom more than 25,00,000 have withdrawn the funds already, the officials said.

The authorities are making payments to the flood victims on the basis of their CNIC and as for the people whose CNICs have expired, they were also getting payments.