Dr Sania Nishtar presides over first BISP Board meeting as chairman

Islamabad: Dr Sania Nishtar chaired first Board meeting of Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) since she assumed office of the Chairperson in October.Dr Sania chaired the 30th meeting of BISP Board at BISP Secretariat. In her introductory remarks, the Chairperson briefed the board and shared her views about the legacy issues of the organization that include; Politicization in the past; the payment process issues; weaknesses in process design with banks; Point of Sale (POS) retailer issues which lead to irregularities; cases of past audit paras and FIA enquiries. Welcoming the government’s decision to keep BISP apolitical, she assured of her commitment to reform the operational working of the organization in a more transparent way. This includes; Risk assurance and management, tightly bound work plans for the stakeholders involved, greater transparency within organization and development of strategic plan to set organizational 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 organization 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 board agreed to the management’s proposal regarding revision in De-crediting Policy; and decided that accounts of the beneficiaries having no withdrawal activity for six months may be blocked and de-credited from the existing one year period. Similarly, accounts of deceased beneficiaries and dubious CNICs holders may be forced de-credited as soon as possible. Among the other agenda items, BISP budget for the fiscal year 2017-18 was approved; BISP employee service regulations 2018 were also discussed in the 30thboard meeting. It was decided that the Service Regulations will be send to Finance Regulations wing for further review.The meeting was attended by Omar Hamid Khan, Secretary BISP andalong with following Board members: Mr. Qazi Azmat Isa, Mr Zafar A Khan, Mr. Atif Bajwa, Dr Ishfaq Hassan Khan, Mir Alam Khan- DG Legal NADRA, Mr. Arif -Senior Joint Secretary, Inter-provincial Coordination, M Bilal Khan-Financial Advisor, Finance Division and Mujtaba Hassan -Joint Secretary, Economic Affairs Division.

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