Price of collecting BISP stipend

Reports from Dawn reveal a persistent problem: agents disbursing Pakistan's Benazir welfare stipends are systematically skimming payments from vulnerable beneficiaries—withholding between fifteen hundred and two thousand rupees per transaction, often much more. Multiple women report receiving only partial payments; one mother was entitled to nineteen thousand rupees but received just seventeen thousand. Families wait in scorching heat while agents distribute funds on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. The Benazir Kafaalat Programme serves over ten million Pakistanis living in poverty, yet beneficiaries feel powerless to resist—they either accept the deduction or forgo the assistance. With forty-four thousand beneficiaries in Hyderabad alone, even modest deductions could total eighty-eight million rupees lost in a single cycle in just that district. The government is now rolling out digital wallets to cut agents out of the process, though most beneficiaries have not yet activated their new accounts.

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