ISLAMABAD: The federal government intends to enlist 300,000 more poor families for financial assistance under its social protection system, Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), taking the number of registered beneficiaries to 9.3 million from nine million.

The budgetary allocation for the social safety net has also been raised to Rs471.68 billion for this purpose. This step has been taken keeping in view the rise in prices of commodities of daily use.

In this regard, mobile registration system has been launched in remote areas to facilitate the poor families in backward areas where people face difficulties in registering themselves as beneficiaries. Currently, the mobile registration vehicle centres are operating in rural, far-flung areas of 25 districts of Sindh including Gothki, Umarkot, Tharparkar, Sanghar and Jamshoro as well as Chagai, Khuzdar, Kech, Awaran, Lasbela, Sibi, Loralai, Qila Saifullah and other districts of Balochistan.

German Corporation for International Cooperation of the government of Germany is collaborating in this initiative. Minister for Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Shazia Marri has said the Benazir Income Support Programme was one of the successful social protection programmes in the world as it identified millions of beneficiaries through dynamic registry and enrolled them in the programme.

She said 820,000 deserving people who were removed from BISP by the previous government were given the right to formal appeal, out of which more than 200,000 beneficiaries have been found deserving.

Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2023