There was a time when disbursements of the social safety net allowances and education stipends were riddled with anomalies, with ghost beneficiaries, relatives of local public representatives and the non-poor getting into the list, leaving out many deserving people.
But mobile financial services (MFS) provider Nagad said the situation has now changed altogether after it digitalised the entire disbursement system and ensured transparency.
In 2021 and 2022, Nagad disbursed 75 percent of all the social safety net allowances, such as old-age allowance, widow allowance, allowance for the underprivileged with special needs and students with special needs.
Also, the MFS provider said before it entered an agreement with the Directorate of Primary Education (DPE) on December 13, 2020, the government had no other option but to halt primary stipend disbursements for a year owing to irregularities and a lack of transparency in the prior distribution system.
In 2021-22 fiscal, Nagad disbursed stipends among over 1.25 crore primary school children with "transparency and accuracy, bringing an end to numerous hassles that many guardians experienced before."
The MFS said in a few months it had completed disbursements of more than Tk4,500 to the accounts of students' mothers who easily got the funds.
Earlier, the government used to disburse primary education stipends as per the government-to-person (G2P) payment system issued by the Ministry of Finance. Now there is coordination between the Finance Division's G2P system and the DPE's integrated digital system for the stipend payout.