ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: President Gen Pervez Musharraf directed the relevant authorities on Thursday to rehabilitate maximum number of Mustahqeen from Guzara Allowance and ensure disbursement of Zakat among them.

During a presentation given to him on the implementation of Zakat programme, the president said efforts be made to benefit the deserving so that they could permanently be made self-reliant and not become dependent upon charity, month after month.

He said the disbursement should go to the genuine Mustahiq, ensuring that the business for which assistance was given had actually been started.

The main focus of the presentation was the review of the implementation of the Status of Zakat Rehabilitation Scheme, the Phase-I of which closed on June 30 last, and the Phase-II commenced from July 17, with the part release of Rs1,000 million to the provinces.

Giving briefing to the president, the Minister for Religious Affairs, Zakat and Ushr, Awais Ghani, said in Phase-I, 99,892 Mustahqeen had actually been rehabilitated against 115,000 identified under the programme.

He said the rehabilitation of the remaining persons was in progress and likely to be completed within a month’s time, a commitment of which was also endorsed by the provincial secretaries before the president.

Speaking of Phase-II, he said under the part implementation of the scheme, 61 per cent of disbursement had already been achieved by distributing the amount to as many as 49,782 beneficiaries, of whom, 9,641 had actually started operating the business.

President Musharraf expressed his satisfaction over the progress, which, he said, though somewhat behind the schedule, was still close enough to it as to expect its full completion in September.

He directed that the remaining portion of Phase-II of Rs4,000 million should strictly follow the timeframe given in the scheme’s proposal, besides the level of transparency must be enhanced to the limit where doubts about it were fully eliminated and every complaint was investigated to the satisfaction of every beneficiary.

In this connection, Musharraf was informed that learning from the past experiences, the mechanism of independent assessment was being introduced from this year onwards, in order to identify and defects or deficiencies in implementation for their prompt rectification before they turned into complaints.

The president noted with satisfaction that the progress of all provincial Zakat departments in respect of Regular Zakat Programmes had fairly improved to the extent that not only all the funds released to them had been utilized fully but a portion of previous years’ balances had also been used to accommodate maximum number of Mustahqeen, which at the close of previous year stood at 178,046.

He also noted that while in the past 20 years the utilization of Zakat funds had averaged at 62 per cent it had jumped to 90 per cent or more in the last two years, which reflected very well upon the coordinated effort evolved to improve the overall efficiency of the Zakat network.

The briefing was also attended by the senior officials of the ministry along with secretaries of the provincial Zakat departments.—APP