KARACHI, May 15 The federal government has failed to distribute among needy women the entire funds allocated for the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) due to either nepotism and corruption in the nomination process or a transparent selection process which flushed out bogus candidates, it emerged on Saturday.

While the BISP's Sindh director-general, Tufail Jumani, conceded that the funds allocated under the BISP could not be fully utilised, sources told Dawn that hardly 60 per cent — around Rs19 billion — of the allocated budget of Rs34 billion could be spent.

The spending also includes office expenses, purchase of vehicles and salaries.

The BISP received the third largest allocation in the federal budget after the debt servicing and defence expenditure, according to Mr Jumani.

Speaking at a media briefing here on Saturday, Mr Jumani said that the government started the BISP in September 2008 and gave over 3.5 million forms to parliamentarians — each MNA and senator was given 8,000 forms and each MPA was given 1,000 forms — to distribute them among deserving women in their respective constituencies.

The forms were collected back and by the cut-off date i.e. April 30, 2009, the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra), after a thorough screening, selected 2.2 million deserving women against the 3.5 million forms distributed to the federal and provincial legislators. The selected women are being given Rs1,000 per month and so far they have received Rs18,000 at their doorsteps.

Sources told Dawn that the whole budgetary allocation for the BISP could not be utilised due to the nomination of wrong candidates and a lack of interest shown by the lawmakers in the distribution of the forms.

They said that the fact that the funds could not be spent fully proves that either the legislators had not honestly distributed the forms among deserving women or the selection criteria/process [of Nadra) was so efficient that it flushed out all the bogus candidates.

However, Mr Jumani refused to give the number of forms that had been submitted by the federal and provincial lawmakers but rejected by the Nadra system.

'New exercise to identify deserving women'

He said that the government was planning to initiate a country-wide poverty survey to identify poor and deserving women so that financial assistance could be provided to them.

He said that the funds allocated under the BISP could not be fully utilised so the government, with the assistance of the World Bank, was initiating the new exercise to identify more deserving women, who so far have not been able to get registered with the BISP.

He said that the total number of beneficiaries of BISP rose to 2.7 million after the government carried out a survey of three districts in each province and identified an additional 500,000 women.

He said that the comprehensive country-wide survey would be initiated by the next month and the government's target was to identify around seven million deserving women so that this year's allocated budget of Rs70 billion could be fully distributed. The government is planning to increase the budget of the BISP to Rs90 billion for the next financial year, he added.

He said that total number of beneficiaries in Sindh was 552,741 including 120,238 in Hyderabad; 106,051 in Larkana; 97,515 in Sukkur; 96,591 in Karachi; 92,539 in Mirpurkhas; 21,807 in Nawabshah; 18,000 in Lyari, Karachi.

He said that under another BISP's welfare component — Waseela-i-Haq — the government gave a Rs300,000 interest-free loan to women to launch their own businesses.

Explaining the procedure for the selection of the grantee of Waseela-i-Haq, he said that the 2.7 million beneficiaries of the BISP have been divided into 800 groups of around 3,000. One woman from each group is being selected through a lucky draw, conducted by President Asif Ali Zardari every month. So far six draws have been conducted and around 4,800 women have benefited, he added.

He said that the criteria for becoming a recipient of the BISP grant is that the candidate should be a female, her family's monthly income should be less than Rs6,000 and she should not be getting any benefit from the government's other welfare programmes, such as Bait-ul-Maal, pension, etc.

He said that he had received some complaints that certain postmen had misappropriated the amount. Investigations were carried out and the culprits had been punished and the women had been compensated.

However, a new system of smart card was being introduced soon after which women would get their money through banks. The BISP offices were also being opened at the taluka level soon for effective monitoring.

He said that over Rs3.82 billion from the BISP funds had also been distributed among the IDP families and the victims of other disasters, such as earthquakes, bomb blasts, etc.