LAHORE:
An audit of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) for 2024-25 has exposed widespread irregularities, including payments to government employees, pensioners and ineligible beneficiaries, duplicate educational stipends and serious flaws in beneficiary records.
The Auditor General of Pakistan’s (AGP) report found that 12,078 government employees, pensioners and their spouses received Rs515.712 million despite their exclusion from the programme under a federal cabinet decision of December 2019.
Another Rs13.041 million was paid in 261 cases involving beneficiaries or their spouses who had travelled abroad, according to the report. The audit also identified payments to vehicle owners, ineligible students and beneficiaries with incorrect marital-status records.
According to the report, BISP had 10.02 million active beneficiary households during the financial year. The inclusion error rate stood at 6.8%, exceeding the prescribed 5% benchmark, while the exclusion error rate was 13.27%, against the permissible 10%.
Auditors attributed the discrepancies to weak data verification, inadequate information-sharing with government departments and ineffective enforcement of eligibility requirements. The report raises questions about the effectiveness of BISP’s eligibility checks and financial controls.
The most significant concerns involved beneficiary identification. In 5,598 cases, the same spouse’s computerised national identity card (CNIC) was linked to the records of as many as seven women, involving payments of Rs239.035 million.
In another 596,252 cases, beneficiaries’ records lacked their spouses’ CNIC details, involving Rs25.460 billion. The combined value of payments in these 601,850 cases amounted to Rs25.699 billion. The audit sought an explanation from NADRA and recommended independent verification of spousal relationships.
The report also identified 97,179 cases in which multiple Proxy Means Test (PMT) scores were recorded against the same household head within the prescribed period. This allegedly resulted in the wrongful enrolment of 18,964 beneficiaries and potential misallocation of Rs533.536 million.
Vehicle ownership was another concern. A sample review of 275,000 cases in Islamabad identified 1,719 beneficiaries owning vehicles beyond prescribed eligibility limits. They had received Rs69.744 million, prompting auditors to seek field verification.
In the Benazir Taleemi Wazaif programme, 165 schools already receiving full government assistance through Pakistan Baitul Mal were also enrolled in the BISP scheme, resulting in duplicate stipends of Rs17.690 million.
Another 278 government employees were registered as higher secondary-level students instead of their children or other eligible beneficiaries, resulting in conditional payments of Rs202.546 million to their mothers.
In a separate audit report, billions of rupees in financial irregularities, violations of procurement rules, unauthorised payments and administrative lapses have been identified in the Diamer-Bhasha Dam project, one of Pakistan’s most important water storage and energy initiatives.
According to the Auditor General of Pakistan’s (AGP) Audit Report 2025-26, physical progress on the project stood at just 19.95% by June 2025, while financial progress had reached 39.67%, highlighting a substantial gap between expenditure and actual construction work.
The report raised serious questions about the utilisation of public funds, contract management, procurement procedures and the pace of construction.
One major audit objection concerns the handling of funds allocated for land acquisition and resettlement. More than Rs73.31 billion was transferred to the bank account of Chilas deputy commissioner/land acquisition collector between October 2010 and June 2021, although the amount should have been deposited into the government treasury before payments were processed.
The audit further revealed that the deputy commissioner transferred more than Rs4.96 billion from the land acquisition funds to 24 different private banks.
The practice was declared a violation of treasury rules, with the AGP recommending an investigation into the financial transactions and fixing responsibility.
The report also questioned awarding the main dam construction contract worth more than Rs442.40 billion to a joint venture between Power China and the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO). The contract value was 31.47% higher than the allocation made in the project’s PC-I.
