BISP management to launch another survey in June

The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) management has decided to launch another survey across the country to minimise the exclusion and inclusion errors of the previous survey. The pilot phase of the National Socio-Economic Registry (NSER) - Update in 16 districts across the country will start by June and end by December this year. The management has issued a request for proposals for the pilot phase to relevant firms while the second phase of the survey is expected to be completed by March 2018.
"The survey will provide an opportunity to more vulnerable people across the country to become eligible for the BISP benefits including unconditional cash transfer programme," a senior official of the BISP told Business Recorder. The survey is a costly, lengthy and technically complex process which requires involvement of multiple stakeholders, therefore it will take time to be fully scaled up, he said.
The federal government allocated Rs 102 billion for BISP in fiscal year 2015-16 budget, while an amount of Rs 387 billion has been disbursed so far to the BISP beneficiaries since the programme began in 2008. Each beneficiary of the programme is currently getting Rs 4,700 per quarter (Rs 1,566 per month) while the government plans to increase the number of beneficiaries from 5.2 million to 5.7 million in 2016-17. To avoid human error and fraud in the survey, the BISP management has decided to use Computer Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI) instead of paper based survey.
It has been decided that the survey will be conducted across the country in a phased manner starting from the pilot phase followed by national roll-out based on the results and lessons of the pilot phase, the official said. "BISP will test desk approach, on-demand survey and door to door approach in the first phase of the survey," he said. He added that BISP has developed a technology enabled system to detect major irregularities in the cash transfer and other programmes like Waseela-e-Taleem. A complete audit of about 1.6 million beneficiaries was conducted following some complaints from the field regarding suspicious beneficiaries in different areas of the country, he clarified.
Record of all the suspicious beneficiaries was confirmed at two levels: first with National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) database and second manual verification of each beneficiary was also done. The official said that a total of 125,714 beneficiaries were identified as suspicious during the exercise and their payments have been stopped. "These beneficiaries will be unblocked subject to verification and necessary documentary evidence," he said.