Financial assistance: Officials defy Gilani’s orders

Baitul Maal, BISP chiefs reject 44,000 application sent by PM secretariat.

ISLAMABAD: Top guns of the Benazir Bhutto Income Support Programme (BISP) and Pakistan Baitul Mal (PBM) openly defied Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani by rejecting 44,000 applications sent to them by the PM secretariat with clear directives to extend them financial help.

Official documents available with The Express Tribune reveal that the PM secretariat received 80,000 applications in two and a half years since Gilani assumed the office of prime minister.

Of these, over 50 per cent (44,000) applications were from the poor who had approached the premier seeking financial help. Their applications, after proper scrutiny, were sent to the chairpersons of the PBM and the BISP for action, but none of these applications were entertained. This has dramatically increased the “disappointment level” among the needy.

Of the 44,000 requests for financial help, 24,925 applications were forwarded to the PBM and 19,840 were sent to the BISP.

Official documents reveal that Gilani had tasked the Prime Minister’s Inspection Commission (PMIC) with scrutinising and referring these petitions to relevant departments/ organisations to carry out appropriate action.

Now, however, Chairman PMIC Amjad Noon is said to have brought into the notice of the prime minister that the chiefs of the PBM and the BISP did not consider the recommendations for financial assistance sent to them.

The petitions addressed to the prime minister were mostly related to financial assistance, employment, facilities like roads, gas, drinking water, property/land and family disputes, excesses or inaction of the police and other public departments, grants and remission of loans and interests.

Since November 2008, the PMIC has processed over 80,000 petitions from a cross section of people, both local and overseas Pakistanis. The average monthly flow of petitions until March 2008 (before the ruling PPP government) was around 2,351 which surged to 4,635 during PM Gilani’s first year in office   an increase of 97 per cent over the previous government.

Gilani was informed that the PMIC was able to generate a fairly reasonable response in respect to the public grievances by coordinating with various implementing agencies/ organisations. However, Gilani was told in writing that the PMIC efforts regarding the requests for financial assistance had not succeeded at all.

The PMIC regretted that no action had ever been taken by the two organisations that are being headed by two powerful PPP leaders.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 2^nd, 2010.