FAISALABAD: Scores of aged women standing or sitting outside a bank on Liaquat Road do not capture any attention from the passersby as it has been a usual scene for them for months.
The bank deals with Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) beneficiaries and releases them their monthly handouts.
Naziran Bibi, 65, of Aminpur Bangla, has been visiting the bank for the last two days to retrieve her BISP ATM card which had got stuck in an ATM a few days ago.
“I waited for my turn to see the bank official on Wednesday but failed,” she told Dawn on Thursday. She also failed to get her card back on Thursday. She is not sure if she will be able to get her card back on Friday (today).
Like Naziran Bibi, scores of BISP beneficiaries from Jaranwala, Tandlianwala, Samundri, Jhumra and Dijkot have to wait for hours every day outside the bank to get their issues solved.
There are more than 80,000 BISP card holders in the district.
Dawn learnt there is just one desk in the bank to deal with BISP card holders. Women say bank officials treat them with contempt.
Majority of the card holders does not know how to draw money from ATMs, said a bank official. Most of the women have their cards stuck in ATMs because of wrong instructions or a fault in ATMs.
Parveen Bibi, one such customer who had her card seized by an ATM at the Samanabad branch, said she had become a shuttlecock between Samanabad and main branches of the bank to retrieve her card.
“The bank staff snubs us and even asks the guards to throw us out,” Parveen said. Outside the bank, there is no seating arrangement for the clients.
Saifur Rehman, operational manager of the Alfalah Bank dealing with the BISP beneficiaries, told Dawn that a majority of women did not know how to withdraw cash from the ATM and they preferred coming to the bank to get handouts.
Shahzad, a teller at the bank, said he had to deal with more than 1,000 BISP clients daily.
He said he was aware of the fact that women had to wait for hours or days to get their issues resolved but he was helpless too. He said there were only two branches dealing with BISP beneficiaries of the district.
Earlier, he said, there were BISP offices in every tehsil. The government had closed the offices, he said. A district government officer said they would depute the volunteers to help the women.
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