Karachi: As many as 7.5 million underprivileged families in Pakistan have so far received an enhanced quarterly instalment of cash assistance provided by the federal government to help them tackle soaring prices of essential products.

The low-income families registered with the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) have started receiving the quarterly cash stipend of Rs 8,500. Previously, the quarterly cash assistance was Rs 7,000. The federal government decided to enhance it keeping in view the increase in inflation.

A total of over 9 million families around the country will receive this enhanced cash support for the period from January to March 2023. In addition to this, a separate quarterly stipend is paid for the education of school-going children of the families registered with the BISP.

For qualifying for this stipend, a child of the registered family should have at least 70 per cent attendance in the classroom. The federal government has reserved a sum of over Rs 83 billion for paying out all these stipends to needy families.

The system of the BISP is also being used to provide special cash assistance of Rs 2,000 to low-income families in Sindh for helping them out in purchasing wheat flour during Ramadan. This cash assistance provided by the Sindh government has so far been paid out through the BISP’s system to over 2.6 million families.

Another recent utility of the BISP’s system was to provide cash support to some 133,000 small farmers in Sindh to encourage them to grow wheat after the widespread flood devastation of last year to avert food shortage in Pakistan.

A total of over Rs 3.5 billion has been reserved by the Sindh government for making these payments to the farmers.

The spokesman for the BISP said there was zero tolerance against the franchise operators of branchless banking systems who unduly deducted money from the quarterly cash payments to low-income families.

He said that such franchise operators were being blacklisted by the BISP while criminal cases were lodged against them for fleecing underprivileged families.

The BISP beneficiaries having similar complaints have been asked to contact the helpline number 0800-26477 for getting assistance.