"A wonderful idea to alleviate poverty of the country" is how sycophants of the present government describe Benazir Income Support Programme. Is paying Rs 1000/ per month to poor families through MNAs of their constituencies, a good idea? Let me tell you of the days when I was appointed Returning Officer for 1977 elections (which were postponed later) and had to cover about 500 villages in the 3 constituencies of Faisalabad division. To pitch polling stations in various schools and appoint Presiding Officers, Polling Officers etc, I had to go through the lists of teachers in each school. To my surprise, there were many ghost teachers in each school who did not work used to draw their salaries each month. Then, there were many ghost schools as well. Now imagine dishing out about Rs 36 billions over a year at the rate of Rs 1000 for poor families in these far-off villages. It is a gigantic task that requires accurate data backed by very meticulous distribution work. Who would select the poor families and who would check that the distribution is being done honestly. I would request the government to spend this amount on some other welfare projects like building free dispensaries with sufficient stock of medicines, installing filtration plants in Kachi abadis to provide clean drinking water or establishing some free langars for the poor. Otherwise, this huge amount from government kitty is obviously going to be misappropriated. -MUHAMMAD AZHAR KHWAJA, Lahore, via e-mail, October 14.