820,165 undeserving beneficiaries removed from BISP list: Dr. Sania Nishtar.

ISLAMABAD -- Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation Dr Sania Nishtar Thursday announced that names of 820,165 undeserving beneficiaries were struck off from the list of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) as their standard of living was above the criteria set for the poor people.

Addressing a press conference, she said that the decision to remove the names from the BISP list had been taken after the approval of the federal cabinet.

During the criteria review, she said, some aspects were looked into, for example, it was ascertained whether the family of a beneficiary had any motorcycle or car or whether a spouse was a government employee.

Out of the total 820,165 beneficiaries removed from the BISP database, 14,730 were government employees, including employees of railways, post office and BISP despite the fact that the facility was not meant for the people working in government departments.

According to the data, she said, 127,826 were those whose spouses were government employees or employees of the above mentioned departments.

She said 153,302 were those who travelled abroad once and 195,364 were those whose spouses travelled abroad once. The number of beneficiaries who travelled abroad more than once stood at 10,476. Similarly, 166,319 spouses travelled abroad more than once.

The BISP removed 692 people from its database because they owned one or more than one vehicle, while 43,746 were removed from the list because their spouses have one or more than one car.

A person who can pay monthly telephone bill of Rs1,000 is not eligible to get monthly stipend from the programme and, therefore, 24,546 people were removed for falling into this category. Similarly, 155,767 persons were excluded from the database as their spouses paid...