ISLAMABAD: Benazir Income Support Programme Chairperson Dr Sania Nishtar chaired the 30th meeting of BISP Board on Monday. It was the first BISP Board meeting since she assumed the office in October.
In her introductory remarks, the chairperson briefed the board about the legacy issues of the organization that included politicization in the past, impediments in the payment process, weaknesses in process design with banks, issues pertaining to point of sale (POS) which leads to irregularities, cases of past audit paras and FIA inquiries.
Welcoming the government’s decision to keep BISP apolitical, she assured of her commitment to reform the operational working of the organization. This included risk assurance and management, tightly bound work plans for the stakeholders, greater transparency within organization and development of strategic plan to set organizational direction with corresponding programmatic design documents, tools and measures, she maintained.
The BISP secretary, while acknowledging the participation of all board members, said, “We want to run the organization in a more transparent way with zero tolerance for corruption. We have plugged many loopholes in the previous system and will continue to improve the mechanism, as per the able guidance of the chairperson.”
The 10-point agenda of the 30th board meeting included payment regulation, unconditional cash transfer (UCT), revised de-crediting and re-crediting policies, ex post facto approval of banking contracts extension, review of the programmes in the pipeline including business incubation for self-employment (BISE) and direct cash model (DC), conceptual framework on nutrition, BISP Employees Service Regulations 2018, budget for the fiscal year 2017-18 and 2018-19, error, fraud and corruption framework and re-constitution of all board sub-committees.
On the agenda of payment regulation, the board accorded the approval on the draft payment regulation for UCT and conditional cash transfer (CCT). The board directed to send the payment regulations to the Finance Division for review. The board agreed to the management’s proposal regarding revision in de-crediting policy and decided that accounts of the beneficiaries having no withdrawal activity for six months may be blocked and de-credited from the existing one-year period.
Similarly, accounts of deceased beneficiaries and dubious CNICs holders may be forced de-credited as soon as possible. Among the other agenda items, BISP budget for the fiscal year 2017-18 was approved; BISP Employee Service Regulations 2018 were also discussed.
