Subsidies to BISP recipients: Ministry seeks PD’s help to get consumers’ data from KE

ISLAMABAD: Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety (MPA&SS) has sought Power Division’s support to get data of electricity consumers from K-Electric (KE), well-informed sources told Business Recorder.

According to the MPA&SS, in pursuance of the Prime Minister’s directions, subsidies may be given directly to the Benazir Income Support Fund’s beneficiaries through their electricity bills.

The BISP requested K-Electric to arrange a meeting to discuss and develop a strategy for bulk data exchange, however, the power utility company replied that the request should be directed through the Power Division.

Protected consumers to get power subsidy via e-vouchers

The BISP requested Power Division to direct K-Electric to collaborate for the implementation of Prime Minister’s directive.

According to the plan, BISP will share the data of Rs 5 million BISP beneficiaries with PITC for reconciliation. After authentication of data by Power Information Technology Company (PITC), subsidies may be given directly to eligible beneficiaries through their electricity bills once Power Division and Finance Division concur.

KE argues that all subsidies are provided to KE and its consumers and are based on the directives of Government of Pakistan through the Power Division and Finance Division and are routed through these offices. Hence, KE argued that the directive for data sharing be also routed through PD and FD.

The Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety (MPA&SS) is to extend subsidy directly to the protected domestic consumers of electricity through E-vouchers.

The BISP will be responsible for sharing the PMT based data with Power Division for further processing whereas Power Division/Discos through registered Mobile Numbers to be verified from Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), will issue E-voucher to relevant consumers. State Bank of Pakistan will be required to engage all the banks for the development of the system to collect the E-Voucher along with electricity bills.

MPA&SS has proposed the following procedure to extend direct subsidy: (i) 20 million families having electricity connections with PMT to be determined by Government will be issued E-vouchers by Power Division/DISCOs; (ii) families within jurisdiction of relevant DISCOs will approach bill collection points including financial institutions, with bill and E-Voucher; (iii) bill collection points will add meter reference number and CNIC to verify subsidy through system and update backend data automatically; (iv) application programming interfaces developed through Power Division/PITC will automatically match consumption with BISP PMT and exclude non-deserving consumers from the list based on consumption data;(v) recovery for one month from those who may be found as un-entitled would be adjusted in subsequent bills; (vi) those who claim to be deserving but not included would have the option of approaching NSER desks for registration and updating consumer number for inclusion in next generation of E-vouchers; and (vii) it has been proposed that one family would get one benefit while currently there is a possibility that one family may be getting multiple meters and thus multiple subsidies.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024