BISP marred by misappropriations worth billions of rupees

ISLAMABAD: Irregularities and misappropriations worth billions of rupees have been detected in the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), according to documents available with Hum Investigation Team.

Irregularities, fraudulent activities, non-recovery of penalties, and failure to deposit de-credited funds into the government treasury has resulted in a loss of Rs3.5 billion, according to confidential documents available with the Hum Investigation Team (HIT).

The documents reveal that over the past few years, billions of rupees have been lost due to various welfare schemes and programmes.

Moreover, BISP has not been successful in recovering penalties from commercial banks amounting to millions of rupees, constituting a violation of the agreement and an undue favour towards the banks charged with disbursing the beneficiary funds.

In the fiscal year (FY) 2018-19, private bank agents, while disbursing billions of rupees to BISP beneficiaries, caused a loss of more than Rs13 million due to fund misappropriation and forgery. This wrongdoing was particularly prominent in districts of Punjab including Rajanpur, Jhelum and Multan.

The BISP additionally experienced a loss of Rs73 million due to illegal bidding by various private companies. The documents further suggest that the management’s unethical alteration of bids in favour of private companies was inappropriate.

According to these documents, BISP paid out billions of rupees to commercial banks for beneficiary disbursements within the agreed timeline. However, late payments to beneficiaries by these banks violated the agreement, resulting in a penalty of Rs1 billion imposed by BISP.

Despite this substantial penalty, BISP has yet to recover the Rs1 billion from the commercial banks. The documents suggest that despite penalties being imposed, BISP continues to conduct financial transactions with these banks.

The failure to deposit de-credited amounts from commercial banks into the government treasury led to further losses of millions of rupees for the BISP.

Despite repeated attempts, the Hum Investigation Team has neither been able to secure an official response from the BISP administration nor received any comment on any queries posed by the team.