Bengali slams striking 800,000 names off BISP roster.

KARACHI -- The first head of the Benazir Income Support Programme, Dr Kaiser Bengali, on Thursday 'strongly condemned' the removal of 800,000 beneficiaries from the roster of BISP beneficiaries, terming it 'abject insensitivity' on the part of the government and its functionaries.

In a statement issued here, he also called the argument that many of them were supporters of opposition political parties as 'particularly petty', saying, 'no matter whose supporter a family is, the poor are the poor and deserve compassionate treatment'.

'Compassion, however, appears to be missing in the current dispensation in Islamabad.'

Dr Bengali explained that the original programme was entirely computer-based that had ensured the undeserving people, as defined on the basis of the database of the National Database and Registration Authority, were omitted from the programme.

'These included government employees, those holding passports or NICOP, those with accounts in foreign banks, etc. The efficiency of the selection approach was tested when several government and opposition parliamentarians in 2008 complained of their nominees being rejected for not meeting the computer-based criteria,' said the economist.

He said the distortion in BISP beneficiary selection process set in...