QUEUE HERE FOR UK’S £1BN FOREIGN AID CASHPOINT
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse ...YOUR cash is doled out in envelopes and on ATM cards loaded with money
STANDING in line, these Pakistani families wait at a cashpoint used to withdraw money on cards loaded with funds from British taxpayers.
More than £1billion of our foreign aid budget has been given away in cash over the past five years, it can be revealed today.
Despite warnings of fraud, officials have quietly quadrupled expenditure on cash and debit cards that recipients can spend at will. The budget has soared from £53million in 2005 to an annual average of £219million in the period 2011- 15. MPs last night compared the foreign cash handouts to ‘exporting the dole’.
As much as £300million is being lavished on a scheme in Pakistan that has been dogged by claims of corruption.
The men and women pictured above are queuing at a cash machine in Peshawar used by many to withdraw money under the project.
Around 235,000 families are pocketing payments every three months to boost their incomes, funded by UK taxpayers. Despite judging the scheme high risk, Whitehall officials plan to expand it to 441,000 Pakistani households by
2020. The revelations fuelled calls from MPs for the Government to ditch the commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid.
Backbenchers have argued it is a scandal that so much is being spent abroad while elderly care in the UK is in crisis and town halls are threatening double-digit council tax hikes to close a funding gap.
Nigel Evans, a Tory MP who sits on the Commons international development committee, last night demanded an investigation into the £1billion cash handouts.
He said: ‘Normally this sort of aid is only given in a crisis or emergency when it is the only way to give help.
‘It only should be a temporary measure, but it seems like we’re exporting the dole to Pakistan, which is clearly not a clever idea.
‘Anything that involves money needs to be properly scrutinised and is clearly open to fraud with money siphoned away when it ought to be directed to those most in need.
‘This is something that International Development Secretary Priti Patel needs to look at urgently to ensure that there is proper accounting for how this money is being delivered.’
More than 9.3million people across 14 countries have received cash payments funded by the British government since 2010.
The UK is also funding several projects through the EU, including a programme in wartorn Yemen, which aid bosses claim is a better way to preserve the ‘dignity’ of recipients than food handouts.
In Pakistan families get 4,500 rupees (£34.50) a quarter, which they can spend however they want, as part of the Benazir Income Support Programme. British taxpayers currently fund 7 per cent of the BISP programme, although in previous years the UK contribution has been nearly 20 per cent. One in ten people get their money in envelopes at post offices, while others get cash cards that are regularly topped up with money that they can withdraw or use in shops. But in a village on the outskirts of Peshawar, the Daily Mail found people taking out money from cash points with cards they said they had been given after paying kickbacks to officials.
Safiullah Khan, 49, a cart pusher in the Khyber Bazaar area of the city, said a local coun- cillor demanded a bribe to enrol his family in the programme. ‘I paid the money and my card was prepared,’ he added.
The most recent Department for International Development annual review admitted there were problems with the database of recipients, which it said ‘needed to be strengthened’. A Dfid-commissioned study into the project also warned that those given cash cards were susceptible to being tricked out of money as they do not know how to use cash machines properly and are easily cheated. They included the example of one place where ‘the village school master collects everyone’s cards’ and takes a 100 rupee (77p) cut from their money in return for helping them take it out.
Pakistani newspapers reported in August that a nationwide probe was being launched ‘after a growing number of complaints about fake accounts and alleged corruption’ from project staff. Seven employees have been suspended on corruption charges and 125,714 suspicious accounts have been suspended.
Last September, the chief minister of one of Pakistan’s four regions, Balochistan, complained about ‘massive corruption’ in the programme and warned most of the money meant for poor families in his area was being misappropriated.
Abdul Malik Baloch said: ‘Uneducated people registered with the BISP do not know how to use the ATMs to draw the money. They are also deprived of the money at the post offices and the BISP offices by the staff.’
The scheme was set up by Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, in 2008, a year after her assassination, and was seen as an attempt to help him be re-elected as president.
Last night Dfid defended the cash transfers and said in Pakistan it has started rolling out biometric payment cards, which verify who people are with their fingerprints, in order to cut out middlemen.
A spokesman said: ‘Cash transfers allow aid to be more efficiently targeted to those who need it, when they need it.
‘In Pakistan, the use of biometric payments makes our programme one of the most secure cash transfers in the world, and means British taxpayers can be sure that the help they provide goes to the less fortunate, not those abusing the system. We have a zero-tolerance approach to fraud and corruption.’