ISLAMABAD - Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal (PBM) on Thursday launched an innovative web application to facilitate the beneficiaries to use their smart phones for locating nearby panagah (shelter home) besides making donations easier with a single tap and get immediate confirmation.
Developed, designed and managed by National Information Technology Board (NITB) and commissioned by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom (MoITT), the app can be downloaded from Google play store.
The panagah application works as a centralised dashboard.
It has various features like contact number of management of shelter homes, displaying the actual number of beneficiaries, availing meal and shelter facility and other relevant details about shelter homes. Lauding the initiative, governor said the new application would help the beneficiaries besides maintaining transparency. He suggested setting up rehabilitation centres for drug addicts. He offered providing all possible help to PBM for providing solace to the people.
PMB Director Zafar Khan Safdar briefed the governor about last three years performance of PBM.
He said the PBM was running 23 panagahs, each panagah providing free meals to 400 to 500 people and offering a 100-bed facility for overnight stay. Over 2.9 million deserving people have so far benefited from shelter homes. Rs50 million per annum were being spent on each panagah. Private sector has been involved for sharing expenditures.
The PBM was planning to set up 13 new shelter homes at various areas of the country by October end this year. As many as 24 more vehicles of “Koi Bhooka Na Soye” programme would start operations by October this year.
It was also informed that the PBM has disbursed some Rs10.5 billion as medical assistance to 98,000 patients. Rs321 million had been spent on treating some 4,000 thalassemia patients in last three years. Some 2,300 children have been registered for conducting cochlear implants. Some 185 surgeries of cochlear implant (a small, surgically implanted electronic device that can give a deaf child a sense of sound) had already been done.
The governor was told that the PBM had spent additional Rs281 million on providing medical facilities to 2505 patients of Balochistan. PBM provided medical aid to some 1,702 cancer patients of Balochistan.
PBM has awarded 21,000 scholarships with the cost of Rs589 million. Deserving students studying in government universities were being offered Rs50,000 scholarship per semester. As many as 1,700 scholarships were being provided to students enrolled in seven universities of Balochistan. A student was being paid upto Rs100,000 per annum scholarship.
PBM MD Malik Zaheer Abbas Khokar assured optimum help in providing solace to the people of Balochsitan. He urged the governor to forward issues of people of Balochistan to PBM for immediate resolution.