Women still face agony in getting BISP stipends in Chitral

CHITRAL: The beneficiaries of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) are finding it hard to receive the financial assistance in Chitral, Drosh and Booni towns due to mismanagement in disbursement of the stipends.

The people complained that they had to stand in long queues outside the franchised mobile phone shops to receive the money. They said the BISP high-ups had failed to implement the terms of reference of the contract awarded to a private bank, thus the mismanagement.

However, sources in BISP said as per ToRs for every 500 beneficiaries there should be a biometric verification service (BVS) machine but in practice there were only four BVS machines, two in Chitral city and one each in Drosh and Booni, for 19,500 beneficiaries.

They said the bank was bound as per ToRs to provide a BVS machine in each village council to disburse the stipend without any cost but at present each beneficiary was being charged Rs200 to Rs300 for receiving the amount.

They said the women were particularly troubled as they had to bear travel and lodging expenses for receiving a stipend of only Rs5,000.

They demanded of the government to disburse the stipend through Pakistan Post as telephone signals were not available in the villages located at large distances from the towns of Chitral, Booni and Drosh, thus rendering the biometric verification useless.–Zahiruddin