The Auditor General of Pakistan’s audit report for FY2024–25 has unveiled considerable irregular disbursements and data control weaknesses in the Benazir Income Support Programme (Benazir Income Support Programme), unfolding financial irregularities exceeding Rs25 billion across more than 600,000 cases.
The report brings to the limelight systemic flaws in the BISP Management Information System (MIS), including weak beneficiary profiling, missing identity data, and duplicate registrations, causing payments to ineligible individuals such as government employees, pensioners, vehicle owners, and duplicate beneficiaries.
Irregular payments to Ineligible beneficiaries
According to the audit, Rs515.712 million was issued to 12,078 government employees, pensioners, or their spouses under the Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) programme, despite a federal cabinet clarifaction issued in December 2019 that clearly barred civil servants and their families from the scheme.
Breakdown of these payments includes:
Inservice employees (Grades 1–17): over Rs25.29 million
Spouses of employees: over Rs405 million
Pensioners and spouses: over Rs85 million combined
The Departmental Accounts Committee (DAC) has issued an order, seeking immediate blocking of these beneficiaries and recovery of funds.
Vehicle owners and duplicate beneficiaries
A test audit of Islamabad vehicle records brought to surface 1,719 beneficiaries owning vehicles above eligibility thresholds, getting Rs69.744 million in total.
Officials warned that since Islamabad represents only a small fraction of national data, the actual scale of irregular payments to vehicle owners nationwide could be higher than what was found in Islamabad.
Education stipend duplication issues
The audit also spotted duplication in education support programmes:
165 schools, which are issued full grants under Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal, were also enrolled in BISP’s Taleemi Wazaif programme, causing Rs17.69 million in duplicate payments.
278 government employees were wrongly placed as students in the programme, receiving Rs2.546 million in stipends.
Field verification across targeted schools confirmed that several beneficiaries were either no longer enrolled or had completed education, making continued payments irregular.
Major Data and System Failures
The report highlighted critical database weaknesses:
CNIC linking errors: One spouse CNIC linked to up to 7 beneficiaries in 5,558 cases amounted for Rs239 million impact.
Missing spouse data: 596,252 beneficiaries lacked spouse CNIC records, causing Rs25.46 billion in disbursements.
Duplicate PMT scoring: 97,179 cases resulted in numerous poverty scores for the same family.
Incorrect marital status records: 7,020 unmarried women registered as married, resulting in Rs104.7 million in payments.
Anomalous household data: Multiple married beneficiaries were put under single households, causing Rs17.37 million in irregular payments.
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