"Day by day increasing complaints against embezzlements by Pakistan Post forced the government to stop the distribution of cash grants through Pakistan Post. Now the releases of cash grants to the beneficiaries in Fata would commence from January 2013 through debit card", sources said.
Sources further revealed that the money sent by BISP in favour of beneficiaries is never lost in case of embezzlement, theft, robbery etc at the payment agency's end. Instead, in case of occurrence of any of the above, the Pakistan Post is required to compensate the beneficiaries immediately if a joint inquiry is not completed within 15 working days.
Sources said, "It is true that in the first week of December, the inquiry report on the irregularities of millions of rupees by the postal departments of Fata and KPK should have been finalised but as the inquiry team has to survey around 0.1 million beneficiaries the report would take another 15 days to complete".
In order to improve the efficiency of the payment delivery mechanism for more timely and efficient service, BISP has signed agreements with several commercial banks to launch the Benazir Debit Cards in 124 districts of Pakistan. So far more than 2.7 million Debit Cards have been distributed and more than Rs 4 billion has been transferred to the beneficiaries.
BISP has planned to distribute Benazir Debit Cards to over 4.0 million beneficiaries by 31 December, 2012. Beneficiaries would now be able to collect their cash benefits from ATM as well as bank-designated franchises while Rs 2.2 billion have been distributed to the beneficiaries through phone-to-phone banking, sources said.