Chairman Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), Farzana Raja has termed the signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with State Life Insurance Corporation (SLIC) as a giant leap to serve the poor masses. She stated this while addressing the MoU signing ceremony between BISP and SLIC here on Friday. The signing of MoU was aimed at providing health insurance cover to all its registered beneficiary families across Pakistan.
Farzana Raja said health related problems were the major concerns of the poor and downtrodden segment of the society. She was optimistic that health insurance will help ease woes of the large number of families who are under the cover of BISP. She added the credit for this landmark step goes to the PPP-led government. "It is a reflection of the vision of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto, as the service of poor people of the country was her prime mission," she added.
Chairman SLIC, Shahid Aziz Siddiqui, while appreciating the efforts of BISP said that health insurance would indeed be an instrumental step to benefit deserving poor families. He assured SLIC's co-operation in making the noble task a success. Under the signed MoU, a pilot project of the health insurance for beneficiary families of BISP will soon be launched and initially, four districts of Pakistan ie Faisalabad, Badin, Noshera and Quetta will be covered while Muzaffarabad, AJK will also be included in the project. She further said, the MoU under the scheme, 2 lakh registered families (approx 1.2 million individuals) of the districts would be entitled to an annual coverage of health insurance equal to Rs 25, 000.