ZAHEER ABBASI

ISLAMABAD: The government has acknowledged 125,714 fake beneficiaries of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) with the highest number in Sindh followed by Punjab.

According to a working paper, the BISP through its own sources identified that its beneficiaries were being updated through case management system (CMS) with mala fide intentions. A wrong update is that computerised national identity card (CNIC) of a woman updated through CMS, who did not belong to the eligible BISP household, was identified in the survey.

The BISP needs to identify such records which have been updated wrongly. The management is in total darkness with regard to the number and extent of wrong updates in the BISP database. Having the largest socio-economic registry in the country, the task seems quite daunting.

Problem became so intense that CMS operations had to be suspended from February 02, 2015 to April 06, 2015. The matter was brought into the knowledge of the finance minister, where chairman Nadra was directed to help BISP identify such records. Identification analysis was to be carried out on all records which have been updated through CMS till February 2015. The Nadra was requested on 03-02-2015 for data sanity check since 2012 to match the household roster, age, name and marital status of beneficiaries with alpha and beta families.

An automated process was developed that was used to identify the existence of a beneficiary citizen number in the family tree of household members. For this purpose, the family tree data of the each household member having valid citizen numbers was queried and within it the beneficiary citizen number was searched. In case it is found, the instances have been marked otherwise the search continued till all the household member’s family tree has been accessed and searched. The Nadra reported that 1,583,710 cases were checked and 1,020,485 were automatically verified. As many as 324,078 cases were not automatically verified and 239,147 could not be verified.

The Nadra further informed that 563,225 records cannot be verified systematically and manual verification would require three to four months approximately.

The Nadra stated that BISP needs to further investigate the records before making final decision. Payment to 563,225 beneficiaries was not generated for the quarter Jan-March 2015 due to non-verification.

The verification process of 563,225 records started and as a result 125,714 cases were found suspicious and their payment has been blocked since then. Of the total 125,714 suspicious beneficiaries, 44,603 were found in Punjab, 55,737 in Sindh, 16,035 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 1,050 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,880 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).