Landikotal BISP beneficiaries demand office in Landikotal

FATA: A score of the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) beneficiaries Sunday observed token strike in Landikotal bazaar demanding of opening of the BISP office in Landikotal Tehsil.

Dozens of local people including male members of the BISP beneficiaries staged token strike in Landikotal bazaar and raised slogans for the opening of the BISP office in Landikotal. They were holding placards and banners inscribed with the slogans that hundreds of deserving women have been deprived of such amount due to the long and difficult process in BISP Peshawar office.

Talking to reporters, prominent social worker Mujahid Shinwari who led the protest said that due to long and difficult process 12.5 million rupees in the BISP bank account couldn't be distributed so far. He said it was so difficulties for the people of Landikotal to fetch their women to Peshawar for collecting Benazir Debit cards and other documentation. He said they would not be able to travel and take out their women fifty kilometers away from their homes to Peshawar. Mujahid said such difficulties deprived hundreds of other deserving women including widows and aged women in Landikotal to get benefited from the BISP program.

Mudir Afridi said total 7,500 women beneficiaries from Landikotal tehsil had been registered with BISP program in which, quoting the BISP official record, said that only two hundred beneficiaries so far have received Benazir Debit Cards from Peshawar office. Afridi alleged that officials in Peshawar BISP not welling to open local offices in every tehsils of the each tribal agencies. He said it needs to go Peshawar at least three times for the completion of the whole BISP process while they receive only Rs 3000. "You have to take your women to Peshawar first for registration, then second time you will have to go for the collection of BDC card and pin code and third travel to Peshawar would be for the collection of money", said Afridi.


Niaz Muhammad said that if immediately not possible to open local offices BISP they should send mobile vans to Landikotal for the completion of initial process. The male members of the BISP beneficiaries asked the governor KPK and federal government to extend local offices at every union council level. They threatened that if the deserving women were deprived of being benefited from BISP they would go on hunger strike at the front of BISP headquarters office in Peshawar.
When contacted Kamran Jan,BISP assistant director and Assistant complaint officer Muhammadullah Afridi said that 25,000 women from Khyber Agency had been registered with BISP and they would increase the number of the BISP beneficiaries. The officials said it was not possible and risky for them to send mobile vans to far-flung areas of Khyber Agency. Kamran Jan said the beneficiaries were collecting money from the local post offices but the embezzlement when exposed in post offices they on the request of the beneficiaries start BDC systems. However, the officials vowed that they would take up the issues with high ups.