Staff Reporter
Islamabad
The government has referred cases against more than 2,000 government employees who fraudulently benefited from the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) to the Federal Investigation Agency, Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) on Accountability Shahzad Akbar announced on Wednesday.
Addressing a press conference in Islamabad on Wednesday, Akbar said the government has also written to all chief secretaries and the Establishment Division for taking departmental action against, and recovering funds from, the government officers who benefited from BISP, which is aimed at providing financial support to the deserving poor and destitute.
It was decided to ask the FIA to register criminal cases against the said government officers and the people who assisted them in the withdrawing of BISP funds because the expenditure was carried out from the federal budget, the SAPM explained, terming it “a straightforward case of fraud”.
He said government analysis had revealed that as many as 140,000 government employees or their spouses benefited from BISP funds meant for the poor. A major chunk of the 140,000 people were government employees of grade 1 to 16 while the rest (2,037) were officers of grade 17 to 22.
“This is a lack of transparency of the system and its regulations that this went on for years and the officers continued to withdraw money,” Akbar said, adding that it was important to “name and shame” people who consumed funds meant for the poor.
Giving a breakdown of the cases identified across the country, the SAPM said the number of government employees of grade 17 and above whose spouses fraudulently benefited from BISP was nine in Azad Kashmir and 40 in Gilgit-Baltistan. As many as 554 officers or their spouses benefited from the programme in Balochistan, 342 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 101 in Punjab and 938 in Sindh.
A total of 39 employees of grade 1 to 16 and four officers of grade 17 and above who worked for BISP itself benefited from the programme; they have now been fired. Among employees of the federal government, this number was 48.
