Farzana Raja inaugurates BISP in Gilgit Baltistan

Monday, March 23, 2009

GILGIT: The presence of Farzana Raja, the Chairperson of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) who flew to Gilgit Sunday, incited members of Northern Areas Legislative Assembly (NALA) to come down hard on successive governments who they believe don’t accommodate local people’s viewpoint in the development and constitutional packages extended to them from time to time.Farzana Raja inaugurated the BISP in the NALA Hall where chief executive NAs, Mir Ghazanfar, Speaker NAs Malik Miskeen, other members of NALA and local PPP leaders Jafar Shah and Mohammad Mussa also participated.Almost all the members of NALA though looked clueless to the distribution system of BISP forms in the country, kept on pressing the chairperson BISP through their speechess to follow the same procedure as was being practice elsewhere in the country. To listening to similar speeches that too based on assumptions tested the nerves of Farzana Raja who herself is known more for delivering speeches. But when she spoke, she convinced by removing the misconception of all those delivering speeches on the BISP a short while ago.Malik Miskeen, the speaker NALA, informed the House that the NALA in this connection had recently passed a resolution unanimously, urging the federal government to distribute BISP forms through elected representative in the NAs. He said that Musharraf government also approved a package for the NAs, which he said was sabotaged by the ministry of Kashmir and NAs. He warned that any package devoid of local people’s viewpoints would backfire.But Ghulam Mohammad, a local PPP leader and member of NALA denied having passed any such resolution unanimously in the House. He said the procedure being adopted by the PPP for the distribution was the best.Another member NALA and PPP leader Mohammad Ismail clarified they were not present in the House when the resolution was passed in the NALA.Those other MLAs spoke on the occasion included Noorul Ain, Ali Murad, Pir Karam Ali Shah, Wazir Wilayat, Mirza Hussain, and Amina Batool.Farzana Raja spoke in the end. She spoke in depth on the BISP and said that every member of NALA would get 500 forms while every technocrats and women member would be provided with 300 forms for distribution in areas fall in the criteria set by the federal government.Farzana Raja said that the package started with Rs1000 but more amount would be added to it gradually.