KP likely to cancel free treatment cards of ineligible people.

Byline: Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR -- The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department is likely to cancel Sehat Insaf Cards on the recommendation of federal government, which has found after forensic analysis that thousands of ineligible people have been included in the survey of Benazir Income Support Programme.

The same data has been used for distribution of SICs among poor people.

'We have recommended to the health ministry that Sehat Insaf Cards issued to well-off people should be withdrawn,' Dr Sania Nishtar, special assistant to prime minister on poverty alleviation and social protection, told Dawn.

She said that they found that 820,165 beneficiaries of BISP did not deserve government's assistance and were enrolled fraudulently. 'Therefore, we have recommended that such names should be struck off the list free treatment programme,' she added.

Dr Sania said that 277, 266 (33.81 per cent) of the fake entries belonged to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; 243,380 (29.63 per cent) hailed from Punjab; 183,042 (22.32 per cent) Sindh; 45,280 (5.52 per cent) Balochistan; 43,445 (5 per cent) from ex-Fata; 17,361 (2.12 per cent) from Azad Kashmir; 8,297 (1.01 per cent) from Gilgit-Baltistan; and 2,094 (0.26 per cent) belonged to Islamabad.

Officials say about 20pc people to lose entitlement to free health services under SSP if recommendations are enforced

Dr Sania, who is also chairperson of BISP, said the names of ineligible beneficiaries were removed from the system and recommendations were made to health ministry to strike off their names from Sehat Sahulat Programme. 'This will pave the way for poor and deserving population to seek free treatment at the government's expenses,' she added.

She said that the funds allocated by the government were meant to facilitate the poor. 'Therefore, we recommend that the names of rich people should be removed and more poverty-stricken ones should be included,' she added.

Officials said that KP had...