City Reporter
Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal on Thursday launched an innovative web application to facilitate the beneficiaries to use their smart phones for locating nearby Panagah (shelter home) venue besides making donations easier with a single tap and get immediate confirmation.
The new app was launched by Governor in the presence of Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal (PBM) Managing Directors Malik Zaheer Abbas Khokar and other senior officials of PBM.
Developed, designed and managed by National Information Technology Board (NITB), 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 centralized 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 threadbare briefed the governor about last three years performance of PBM.
He said PBM was running some 23 Panagahs, in each Panagah were providing free meals to 400 to 500 people and offers a 100-bed facility for overnight stay. Over 2.9 million deserving people have so far benefited from Shelter homes. Rs 50 million per annum were being spent on each Panagah.
Private sector has been involved for sharing expenditures.
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.
The governor was apprised that the PBM has disbursed some Rs 10.5 billion as medical assistance to 98,000 patients. Rs 321 million has 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 some Rs 281 million additional on providing medical facilities to 2505 patients of Balochistan. PBM provided medical aid to some 1,702 cancer patients of Balochistan.
