Minister of State and
Chairperson BISP, MNA Marvi Memon visited Babuzai and Maimand in Swat today
where she held meetings with BISP officials, beneficiaries and local notables.
The purpose of the visit
was to gauge the impact of BISP financial assistance upon life standards of
beneficiaries and to monitor the service delivery level of BISP offices.
According to Third Impact
Evaluation Report of BISP, BISP has caused 7% drop in poverty and 3% decline in
poverty gap. In terms of child nutrition, there has been a reduction in
proportion of wasted girls and decrease in malnutrition among girls by 11% as
80% of the beneficiaries spend the fund on food. BISP Waseela-e-Taleem has led
to an increase in enrollment of children between ages of 5-12 by 10% points
higher than the international average. On women empowerment front, BISP has
caused to improve the women mobility to 37% and 76% of women retain full
control on their stipend. During her
meetings with beneficiaries, Chairperson BISP enquired beneficiaries about the impact of BISP stipend upon
their lives and about spending of this stipend. Beneficiaries informed that
BISP stipend has assisted them to meet their day to day expenses and has helped
to spend on the food, education and health of their children besides payment of
their loans, setting up small businesses and even saving small amounts.
Chairperson BISP also enquired if they were comfortable with
current mechanism of withdrawing money through ATMs. She informed them
that to overcome the difficulty in using ATM by beneficiaries, BISP would
soon covert the payment mechanism to Biometric Verification System (BVS). She also
discussed about the level of cooperation of BISP staff for resolving their
problems. Beneficiaries expressed satisfaction over the service delivery of
BISP tehsil office. Chairperson directed BISP officials not to make any
compromise in attending to the concerns of beneficiaries. In order to increase
their income and resolve the issue of unemployment, Chairperson BISP urged the
beneficiaries to save money from BISP stipend and invest into learning some
skills or making traditional handicrafts and products so that they could
graduate out of poverty.
Chairperson BISP also visited the house of BISP beneficiary
Sultana in Miamand along with local Nazim Raza Khan. While talking to her,
Chairperson asked her about withdrawal of BISP stipend. Sultana informed that
she withdraws quarterly stipend herself and she withdraws complete amount of
Rs. 4834. During her interaction with the notables and local government
representatives led by District
President PML (N) Sadiq Khan in Miamand, the Minister stated that in order to update the National
Socio-Economic Registry (NSER), BISP would soon start resurvey in the entire
country. She urged them to fully facilitate and cooperate with the survey teams
so that no deserving is left out in the resurvey.
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