Allowances can be collected without Nagad, bKash, SIM must be registered

From now on, recipients must receive their government allowances on registered mobile phone SIM cards under their National Identity Card (NID). This applies to all financial service providers, not just Nagad or bKash; people can collect their allowances through any institution providing these services.

Previously, the allowances were distributed through cash and bKash in a Government to Person method.

A new decision has been implemented by the Department of Social Services starting from July. It states that this arrangement has been made to ensure that other family members cannot withdraw the allowance.

In the past, the mobile phone number of any family member could be used in the application form for the allowances. Particularly, elderly individuals in rural areas, who are not accustomed to using mobile phones, would provide the mobile phone number of their grandchildren or another family member.

The Department of Social Services has reported that complaints have been received for a long time in their various offices stating that many aged persons are not receiving their allowances.

Investigations have found that grandchildren or other family members have collected the money and spent it. And the elderly individuals report that the allowance has not been received. The department believes that there will be no such problems in the new system.

According to the new regulation, beneficiaries must register their SIM card against their NIDs.

The Department of Social Services offers elderly allowances, allowances for widows and women affected by domestic violence, disability allowances, scholarships for disabled education, development for the Bede community, development for the Hijra community, support for the tea worker community, and allowances for underprivileged groups.

The number of beneficiaries of these allowances totals 12.8 million people across the country.

That allowance recipients must have their SIM cards registered under their respective NID.

Md. Mosharraf Hossain, Director, Social Security Division, Department of Social Services, stated that payment of allowances will only be made to mobile numbers associated with these NID-registered SIMs. This new requirement also applies to existing beneficiaries, who will be brought under the new system in phases.

However, he acknowledged a key challenge: many elderly people may not have a legible fingerprint, which is required for SIM card registration. For such cases, the new rule may be relaxed on a case-by-case basis.

Mosharraf Hossain, Director of the Social Security Division at the Department of Social Services, told Prothom Alo that under the new rules, beneficiaries must register a SIM card against their own national ID card. They will also need to open a mobile financial service account with that number using their ID card, fingerprints and photograph. Allowance payments will then be transferred directly to this registered account.

He added that those already on the list will also have to complete the registration in phases. However, as fingerprints of many elderly beneficiaries cannot be captured, the rules will be relaxed in such cases.

When asked about what would be done for those elderly individuals who cannot use mobile phones at all, Mosharraf Hossain stated that the number of such individuals in a specific area is very small. In such special cases, those individuals will be kept under separate observation by the local social services office.

On 15 April, the Finance Division of the Ministry of Finance issued a circular stating that in the case of social security programmes and other cash distributions, the beneficiaries themselves will choose the financial service provider or bank (agent bank) via their mobile phones.

In this regard, the distributing Ministry, Department, Office, or Agency shall not be allowed to enter into contracts with any institution, it added.

Mosharraf Hossain said this change gives recipients more control over how they access their funds. This has also been implemented from July, he added.

He also mentioned that the beneficiaries are selecting institutions according to their convenience. Many have changed the institution through whose app they previously received the allowance.

For the past five years, government allowance payments were distributed nationwide through the G2P (Government-to-Person) system using two mobile financial service providers - Nagad and bKash.

Nagad was handling 75 per cent of the areas, while bKash handled the remaining 25 per cent. Beneficiary areas were divided between the two companies. The five-year contract between the Directorate of Social Services and these two companies expired in June of this year.

Behula Begum was a beneficiary of an old-age allowance, but she became aware that something was wrong when she didn’t receive her payments despite being approved for the programme after a year and a half.

Before investigation, she discovered that the mobile number on her file had been changed to a different one, and the allowance money was being sent there instead. The number belonged to the deceased husband of a former female member of the Union Parishad. This incident occurred in 2021 in the village of Agchhawali in Mirzapur Upazila, Tangail.

After she filed a complaint, the local social services office took action.

Such irregularities have been reported. When asked about cases where allowance money is sent to different phone numbers, the Director of the Directorate of Social Services stated that they are taking action whenever such irregularities are discovered.