New BISP chairperson to take stock of situation

Marvi Memon, the newly-appointed chairperson of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), has convened a brainstorming session of officials on March 8 to improve working and effectiveness of the programme. According to an official circular, all director generals and directors of the headquarters, regional director generals and director headquarters of regional offices as well as all divisional directors are directed to attend the session.
"All participants are requested to come mentally prepared to make meaningful discussion/contribution on targets and key performance indicators," the circular said. The BISP officials are directed to come up with innovative ideas to improve performance and outreach of the programme besides suggesting solutions to the problems that the programme is faced with.
A senior official told Business Recorder on Friday that the chairperson is focused to introduce some new but innovative programmes to reach maximum number of the poor people, especially in the rural and far-flung areas of the country. "It is premature to say anything at this stage about the future programmes, but one thing is for sure and that the major focus would be on education and health programmes for the poor people," he said.
The official said that cash disbursement to the poor people and under-privilege across the country is now being done smoothly; therefore, the chairperson wants to focus more on Waseela-e-Rozgar, Waseela-e-Taleem and Waseela-e-Sehat. "A pilot project of the Waseela-e-Sehat has already been running in Faisalabad and this may be expanding to other districts as well in the coming months," he said.
The official said that the BISP chairperson also wanted to devise a mechanism to bring out-of-school children into schools by offering incentives to their families through the BISP. Since the Education Ministry is devolved to provinces under the 18th Constitutional Amendment; therefore "we will have to devise a mechanism with the provinces to promote education under the banner of the BISP," he said.
The BISP has identified 7.2 million eligible poor families on the basis of a nation-wide poverty scorecard survey using a proxy means test approach. Out of it, 2.4 million eligible poor families are not yet receiving the cash transfer because the female head does not hold a Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC), which is the key eligibility criterion to become eligible for getting financial support through the BISP. The official said that National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) would be contacted to arrange its mobile team to get the CNICs for poor women in rural areas of the country, especially in Sindh and Balochistan.