Pakistan flagship poverty alleviation drive staff stop work

Karachi: Staff of Pakistan’s flagship poverty alleviation initiative have shut their offices across the country to protest against unsatisfactory service conditions. They fear if these conditions persist, they too could be affected economically.

The employees of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) have gathered at the BISP headquarters in Islamabad to stage a sit-in and protest against the non-fulfilment of their demands that have been pending for over a decade.

Owing to the protest drive, around 800 field offices of BISP in various towns of the country have been shut. The agitation drive has been continuing for resolving various service-related problems of over 2,000 employees of BISP.

The BISP employees earlier staged demonstrations in various cities and as per their plan later came to Islamabad to stage a protest sit-in after their demands were not met by the government.

The representative association of the agitating employees has decided to keep the BISP field offices shut till their demands are not met.

The demands include regularisation of daily wage and contingent staff, health treatment facility for the BISP employees and systems of regular promotions and post-retirement benefits for these staffers.

So far talks between the representatives of the agitating employees and the government have not yet started to resolve the situation.

The BISP employees expressed sorrow that they had been diligently discharging their duties for the past 12 years but their service conditions had remained unchanged amid a constant increase in inflation in the country.

“It is pitiful that staffers who have been successfully running one of the best poverty alleviation drives in the world have to face such conditions forcing them to leave their offices and protest,” said Sohail Abbasi, a leader of the BISP Employees’ Welfare Association.

The BISP with an annual budget of Rs 364 billion runs a cash assistance programme for over 8 million destitute families in the country. The federal government recently used the same programme to spend Rs 70 billion as emergency cash assistance to poor families in the flood-hit districts in the country.