Federal Minister and Chairperson Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) Farzana Raja has announced to include 4907 Indian Held Kashmir (IHK) refugee families in social safety net of BISP. The historic announcement was made during her meeting with a delegation of IHK Refugees that called on her here at Prime Minister House in Muzaffarabad, says a press release issued here on Saturday.
Prime Minister AJ&K Chaudhry Abdul Majeed and Finance Minister AJ&K Chaudhry Latif Akbar were also present on the occasion. Farzana Raja said that like other BISP beneficiary families, these IHK Refugee families would be entitled to benefit from all the components of BISP ie Cash Grants, Waseela-e-Haq, Waseela-e-Rozgar, Waseela-e-Sehet and Waseela-e-Taleem. While expressing solidarity with the IHK refugees, she said that Pakistan would stick on its stance at international level for the cause of freedom of Kashmir.
Chairperson BISP said that out of six million beneficiary families included in BISP, more than 75, 000 belong to AJ&K only. She said that the programme unanimously endorsed by both houses of Parliament is serving the masses of the country indiscriminately in most transparent way. The programme is on its way to make Pakistan including AJ&K a welfare state, she added.
She also announced that BISP has introduced a special exemption in Poverty Scorecard to include families with one or more disabled members in the household and the mechanism will be implemented soon. Later while talking to journalists, Farzana Raja rebuffed the rumours that the funds of earthquake affectees have been transferred to BISP, adding that BISP has its own allocated budget and is supported by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and DFID etc due to its good performance.-PR