PESHAWAR: The residents of different districts have complained that they have not received Sehat Insaf Cards owing to carelessness of the non-governmental organisations tasked with distribution of the cards.

According to officials, some deserving people registered for free treatment under the Sehat Sahulat Programme, launched by government in January this year, are yet to benefit because they don’t have Sehat Insaf Card (SICs), the basic requirement for availing care. They say that in Dir Upper and Lower, there are more than 1000 people, who have been issued SICs but they are yet to get the same.

The deserving people for SICs were selected on the basis of data provided by Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP). They include those families, whose daily income is below $2 a day. Last month, the government included more families in the programme. Now, the programme would cover 69 per cent population or 2.5 million families for which Rs1.69 billion have been given by the government.

Sources said that the programme was implemented by the State Life Insurance Corporation (SLIC) on behalf of the provincial government. The SLIC had tasked different NGOs to distribute the cards among the families but in many districts they hadn’t perform the task efficiently.

Officials say corrective measures being taken

“In Mansehra, Hangu, Bannu, Mardan etc, the NGOs didn’t deliver the cards to the families in line with the terms and condition reached with the SLIC. In many cases, they handed over cards to someone else to distribute them so the cards didn’t reach the relevant people. We have blacklisted those NGOs for showing ineptness,” said officials.

They said that the NGOs were selected through proper bidding process to ensure that the people received the cards in time but their casual attitude deprived the deserving patients of free treatment. They said that the NGOs deliberately misplaced hundreds of SICs.

However, some people were able to get free health services by showing their Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs) at the special counters established at the hospitals. Such patients were issued duplicate SICs but most people didn’t come for treatment for not having the cards.

Officials also held politicians responsible for the situation, saying they distributed the cards among people in their hujra but ignored those people, who didn’t belong to their parties.

The initiative was launched in four districts — Malakand, Mardan, Chitral and Kohat — last year that was extended to the whole province this year. “We are learning from the experiences and taking corrective measures. Now, we have established card distribution centres where people are invited to get their SICs,” said the officials.

They said that they appointed focal person for every district to issue token to the relevant families through social mobilisers for giving them SICs. The process is becoming more transparent with the passing of time.

Officials said that there were 485,000 families, who didn’t get their cards because they were not available in the areas where they had been registered.

“As the data for selection of deserving families was very old and people shifted to other places due to which they couldn’t be traced. Also, we have enrolled displaced people from Fata living in Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Tank, Dera Ismail Khan and Peshawar but they have left for their ancestral villages,” said officials.

They said that health department was supervising the process of card distribution and treatment to ensure that the beneficiaries availed the opportunity of free of cost health services.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2017