Benazir-Muawinat Cards: disbursement of Zakat allowances to begin from August 1

More than 80,000 Zakat beneficiaries of Sindh would get various zakat allowances through newly introduced "Benazir-Muawinat-Cards" from the August 1st 2012, Business Recorder learnt here on Wednesday.
Informed sources familiar with this development told BR that Zakat and Ushr department with the help of committees existing in various districts and taulkas and union councils has issued around 20,000 Benazir cards to zakat beneficiaries.
The process of issuing this kind of automated cards is continued while, all the beneficiaries would get this card till the July 31st and all cards would be made functional from August 1st 2012, they said.
In this regard, Zakat & Ushr department and National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on May 12, 2012.
From the August 1st, each zakat beneficiary would receive Rs 3,000 (at the rate of Rs 500 per month) every six months through Nadra's E-Sahulat centres by going through a process of bio-metric identification, sources said.
This new change in the disbursement of all kind of zakat allowances would shift the system of zakat department towards the complete transparency, they said.
Provincial Zakat department would disburse annually around Rs 500 million out of zakat budget through these new automated cards, they said.
The authorities of zakat department had started this work with Nadra in June 2011, and provided all documents related to the matter of zakat and its beneficiaries to the Nadra officials in order to prepare complete database, sources said.
In this connection, Secretary Zakat, Ushr and Auqaf Department Syed Abid Ali Shah told Business Recorder that Benazir cards scheme was initiated on the directives of President Asif Ali Zardari.
He told that Nadra's team is in process to establish more than 100 E-Sahulat outlets all over the province for disbursement of zakat amount in the head of various allowances. Not only this, he added that Nadra' team would also conduct reporting and monitoring of whole new e-system in order to make it 100 percent transparent.
He said that many E-Sahulat outlets would be established in suburbs of Karachi and Hyderabad while, many outlets would be established in all other districts as well.
"Nadra database would be instrumental in identification and screening of Mustahiqeen (deserving beneficiaries). Disbursement of zakat through Benazir cards would minimise human-hand involvement in the process of disbursement", Abid Shah said.