Govt employees, pensioners spouses paid Rs89m from BISP, PAC told

ISLAMABAD: Audit officials Tuesday disclosed in the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that cash payments worth Rs89 million from the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) were made to spouses of government employees and pensioners and their families.

Government officers in Grades 18, 19 and 20 and pensioners benefited from these payments.

Junaid Akbar Khan chaired the committee meeting in which the audit paras of the Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety for FY2022-23 and 2023-24 were examined.

The committee was told that 2,235 spouses of government employees and 704 spouses of pensioners were receiving money from these conditional cash transfers. The pensioners who get pension more than Rs30,000 were not eligible under the BISP policy and the payments were made to the families of employees from Grade 1 to Grade 20, including 263 employees of Grade 15, 42 of Grade 16, 21 of Grade 17, 15 of Grade 18, 11 of Grade 19 and three employees and pensioners of Grade 20. Secretary BISP said if the committee wanted, they will bring their names to the fore. He admitted that the institution did not have any clear recovery mechanism.