ISLAMABAD - BISP board on Monday approved Payment Regulations 2018 and amended de-credit and re-credit policies of the beneficiaries.
Chairperson BISP Dr Sania Nishtar chaired 30th meeting of 1st BISP board. The meeting was attended by Omar Hamid Khan, Secretary BISP and board members including Qazi Azmat Isa, Zafar Khan, Atif Bajwa, Dr Ishfaq Hassan Khan, Mir Alam Khan, DG Legal NADRA, Arif, senior joint secretary, Inter-provincial Coordination, Bilal Khan, financial advisor, Finance Division and Mujtaba Hassan, joint secretary, Economic Affairs Division.
The 10-point agenda of the 30th board meeting included payment regulation, unconditional cash transfer (UCT), revised de-crediting and re-crediting policies, ex-post facto approval banking contracts extension till, review of the programmes in pipeline regarding graduation including business incubation for self employment and direct cash model, conceptual framework on nutrition, BISP employees Service Regulations 2018, budget for fiscal year 2017-18 and 2018-19, error, fraud and corruption framework and re-constitution of all board sub-committees.
On the agenda of payment regulation, the board accorded approval on the draft payment regulation, BISP 2018 for the unconditional and conditional cash transfer. The board directed to send the Payment Regulations to Finance Division for vetting and notifying. The board agreed to management’s proposal regarding revision in de-crediting policy and decided that accounts of the beneficiaries having no withdrawal activity for six months might be blocked and de-credited from the existing one year period.
Similarly, accounts of deceased beneficiaries and dubious CNICs holders might be forced de-credited as soon as possible. Among the other agenda items, BISP budget for the fiscal year 2017-18 was approved. The BISP employee service regulations 2018 were also discussed in the 30th board meeting. It was decided that the Service Regulations will be send to Finance Regulations wing for further review.
In her introductory remarks, the chairperson briefed the board and shared her views about the legacy issues of the organisation that include politicisation in the past, payment process issues, weaknesses in process design with banks, point of sale retailer issues which lead to irregularities and cases of past audit and FIA enquiries. Welcoming the government’s decision to keep BISP apolitical, she assured of her commitment to reform operational working of the organisation in a transparent way. This includes risk assurance and management, tightly bound work plans for stakeholders involved; greater transparency within organisation and development of strategic plan to set direction with corresponding programmatic design documents, tools and measures, she maintained.
Secretary BISP, while acknowledging the participation of all board members said that we want to run the organisation in more transparent way with zero tolerance for corruption. We have plugged many loopholes in the previous system and will continue to improve the mechanism, as per the able guidance of chairperson, the secretary added.
