Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) audit report for FY 2024-25 has revealed more than Rs25 billion irregular payments to over 601,850 beneficiaries who are not eligible for the programme, highlighting serious flaws in the programme’s profiling and management.
The audit, conducted by the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) has revealed serious lapses in the BISP Management Information System (BISP-MIS), specifically spouse data profiling.
One of the most notable findings was that even though the federal cabinet in 2019 decided against providing cash transfers to civil servants and families of government officials, the Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) Programme paid Rs515.7 million to 12,078 government employees, pensioners and their spouses.
The Departmental Accounts Committee (DAC) has directed to block such beneficiaries and that the recovery of funds be made immediately.
The audit also revealed that 1719 beneficiaries in Islamabad who owned vehicles above the prescribed eligibility limit took Rs69.7 million in payment from UCT.
The country’s national figure could be significantly elevated as the audit took into account only the registration of Islamabad vehicles, auditors said.
A total of Rs17.69 million was paid to 165 fully sponsored schools already supported by Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal (PBM).
Further, there were 278 government employees who were enrolled as higher secondary students under Benazir Taleemi Wazaif programme and were paid Rs2.55 million.
Field verification of selected schools throughout the Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa showed that sampled beneficiaries had either finished their education or were not attending school anymore.
During the audit, critical issues involving data exposure were also identified. A total of 5,558 cases involving Rs239 million were found in which a single spouse’s CNIC was linked to multiple females.
While 596,252 beneficiaries lacked spouse CNIC information altogether, accounting for Rs25.46 billion in disbursements.
There were also multiple registrations of beneficiaries for the same household, resulting in the irregular enrollment of 18,964 beneficiaries, which may have caused the misallocation of Rs533.5 million.
The other irregularities involved the payment of Rs104.7 million to 7,020 women with inaccurate marital statuses and Rs17.4 million to households with unrealistic numbers of married female beneficiaries.
BISP was instructed to improve verification systems, link data system with PBM, get clarifications from NADRA, clarify and physically verify a sample of high risk cases from the DAC.
Also read: BISP sets deadline for Benazir mobile SIM registration
