A sub-committee of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was Thursday informed that hundreds of government officers and bureaucrats had embezzled funds meant for the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) beneficiaries.
The committee was informed that government employees, pensioners and even their spouses had illegally received BISP payments and it directed that criminal cases be filed against the officials involved.
The BISP is widely recognized as the country’s largest poverty alleviation programme as it has reached over ten million families as of August 2025, with the goal of empowering women and supporting children’s education and nutrition. The budget of the programme was increased by 20% i.e. from Rs. 592 billion in 2024-25 to Rs. 716 billion in 2025-26 with the aim of accommodating a rise in the quarterly cash transfer benefit to Rs14,500 and maintaining support for 10 million enrolled households. It is understood that trillions of rupees were allocated to the programme since its inception in 2008 but there is no reliable evidence to suggest it has brought any meaningful change in the ground situation and instead the number of people falling below the poverty line has increased during this period. There are no effective safeguards against misuse of the allocations on political considerations and the report of the sub-committee confirms this aspect beyond any doubt. Knowledgeable people argue that hundreds of thousands of otherwise ineligible people have been enrolled and are getting cash grants regularly.
On the other hand, there are hundreds of thousands of families that have not been enlisted as beneficiaries under the BISP and there is no transparent mechanism for rectification of the situation. As the programme operates at the grassroots, there is weight in complaints that this is happening with the collusion of the officials concerned. A comprehensive inquiry by a neutral body is required to pinpoint culprits, take disciplinary action against them and ensure recovery of the payments made to non-deserving people. The verification of fraudsters should not be a difficult task in this age of information technology. A few days back, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif launched 10 million digital wallets for beneficiaries of the BISP, calling it a “historic milestone” in Pakistan’s drive toward transparency, financial inclusion and a cashless economy and hopefully it would help promote transparency. However, there is all the more need to review and revise the eligibility criteria for the beneficiaries so that the programme reaches out to each and every deserving family.
