Country wide, AJK & G-B: As many as 1,308 posts in BISP lying vacant
ISLAMABAD: As many as 1,308 posts or more than 37 percent of the total 3,486 posts in the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) across Pakistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan are lying vacant with last recruitment in BISP done over 12 years ago.
This has been revealed in the official data of the federal government shared with a panel of the Upper House of the Parliament.
“The last recruitment in BISP was done in 2014, and no recruitment has been made afterwards,” read the government’s written reply to a question posed by Senator Jan Muhammad during a recent meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Economic Affairs.
The senator had sought from the government the details of the total sanctioned posts including the current vacant posts in BISP—and whether any proposal was under the government’s consideration to fill in the vacant posts.
The vacant posts are filled in through deputations from different government departments for three to five years, the reply stated.
It said that “efforts were made” to fill in the vacant BISP posts through advertisements in Special Pay Scale (SPS) 1 to 4 in August 2024.
“However, the process was halted due to the austerity measures implemented by the federal government, and conveyed by the Finance Division/Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety,” said the government’s reply.
Presently, it said, the case for seeking exemption from this policy is under process.
The relevant data revealed that there are 542 sanctioned posts from SPS 1-22 at the BISP headquarters in the federal capital, of which 457 are occupied and 85 remain vacant.
As many as 237 posts are lying vacant in Punjab, 484 in Sindh, 154 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 238 in Balochistan, 57 in AJK, and 53 posts are lying vacant in GB.
In total, 1,308 or 37.52 percent of the sanctioned 3,486 posts are lying vacant, reveals the official data.
In September last year, Chairperson BISP Rubina Khalid informed the Standing Committee on Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety that BISP heavily relied on deputationists due to the restrictions imposed by the Finance Division on regular appointments.
The said committee unanimously agreed on summoning Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb in the next meeting on the issue of providing sufficient funds for new recruitments in the BISP, but the matter still remains pending.
A BISP source, requesting anonymity, told Business Recorder that government officers appointed in BISP on deputation do not want absorption in BISP due to the reason that BISP does not offer pension on the retirement of its employees. “The BISP job is not pensionable, which is a major reason that keeps the deputationists from seeking to get their appointments regularised at the BISP,” the source said.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026