March 19, 2008	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 10, 1429

TOBA TEK SINGH, March 18: More than 2,300 applicants for grant of scholarship, marriage and funeral expenses from the Provincial Benevolent Fund Board have been awaiting the funds for the last 15 months.

Among the ‘beneficiaries’ are widows and children of government employees, who apply for the grants with the district coordination officer’s office and the amount is released when the PBFB makes the funds available.

A widow of a government employee told Dawn that after the death of her husband she had applied in June 2007 for funeral grant and dowry fund for the marriage of her daughter, but she had yet to be given any amount even after well over an year despite repeated visits to the office.

A similar complaint was lodged by a college student, a son of a retired government employee, who said his father had applied for educational scholarship from the benevolent fund more than one year ago but the officials at the DCO office claimed that they had not been supplied the required funds.

An official at the DCO office said he had in his office 160 applications for monthly grant, 1,159 for educational scholarships, 223 for wedding finance and 282 for funeral expenses, but the board’ s provincial office was not releasing funds to the DCO office.

The committee, comprising the DCO (chairman), the EDOs of finance and planning, education, works, and the district officer (coordination), had repeatedly written for the funds which had ended on Dec 31, 2006, but so far no response had been received.

The official said the PBFB had recently sent funds to Faisalabad district, but why Toba Tek Singh district was being ignored was anybody’s guess. The local authorities required Rs58,094,500 to accommodate all the applicants they had received so far.