Benazir Income Support Programme: Poverty, terrorism big challenges: Farzana

Federal Minister and Chairperson Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), Farzana Raja has said that the BISP was a practical manifestation of the dreams and wishes of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto for providing service to poor masses of the country.

She said that more than three million poor families have been registered under the BISP as beneficiaries and this number would rise up to five to seven million after the completion of Nation-wide Poverty Survey in June 2011, adding that because of the transparent nature of its operations, BISP gained support and trust of international donors and financial agencies.
She expressed these views while addressing media persons at 'Meet the Press' programme here at National Press Club on Thursday. Farzana Raja said that the country at present was confronting two big challenges: terrorism and poverty. However, the democratic government is fighting with both of them with full zeal and vigor. She said that BISP has played vital role in fight against terrorism and supported Pak Army with relief and rehabilitation efforts.
She said that the government would seek the support of the people of Pakistan after completing its five-year tenure on the basis of its performance. She added further that BISP was a programme to serve the poor people of Pakistan across the board. Therefore, all political parties should feel a sense of ownership instead of mere opposition for the sake of opposition.
She elaborated further that besides providing monthly Cash Grant to beneficiary families, BISP, as a comprehensive social safety net, launched other initiatives ie Waseela-e-Haq, Waseela-e-Rozgar, Life Insurance and Mobile Phone Banking and is all set to introduce Health Insurance for its beneficiaries as well. All these innovative measures are vital to combat poverty.
She said that to improve the delivery mechanism, a state-of-the-art technologically based advanced mechanism of delivering the benefits has already been introduced. Under Waseela-e-Haq initiative, she said, BISP offers Rs 300,000 long-term interest free financial assistance, to randomly selected beneficiaries, to be recovered in 15 years. Moreover, the Health Insurance to the beneficiary families would be introduced while Life Insurance scheme has already been launched and in case of the death of bread earner of beneficiary family, Rs 100,000 would be provided to the family within two weeks.
She said that BISP has also introduced Waseela-e-Rozgar to empower female beneficiary or her nominee to become economically independent by acquiring demand-driven vocational skill and technical education. She said that the issue of Namoos-e-Risalat (SAW) had been settled 1,400 years before and now politics on the issue would be totally unnecessary.-PR