PPP MNA Nafisa Shah was never a welfare beneficiary
Fake News: Pakistani opposition lawmaker received welfare payments for 7 years
(AFP) – Multiple Facebook and Twitter posts shared thousands of times claim a Pakistani lawmaker received government welfare payments for the last seven years whilst holding the position of Information Minister for a provincial government in Pakistan. The claim is false; the welfare system chief denied that the lawmaker was ever a beneficiary of the scheme; official records show the lawmaker is not the Information Minister for a provincial government in Pakistan; the lawmaker herself has also refuted the false claim.
The false claim was published in this Facebook post on January 17, 2020. It has been shared more than 6,700 times.
Below is a screenshot of the false Facebook post:
The photo shows Nafisa Shah, a Pakistan People’s Party lawmaker.
The post’s Urdu-language caption translates to English as: “First Benazir Income Support (programme) face is unveiled. The daughter of former Chief Minister Sindh Qaim Ali Shah, current information minister PP Sindh Doctor Naifisa Shah is taking this money for the last seven years...alas..”
The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) is a state-run financial aid scheme launched in 2008 that offers unconditional cash transfers to poor households. It is named after the late former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Sindh is a province in southeast Pakistan.
A similar claim was published here, here and here on Facebook and here and here on Twitter, with the same photo of Shah.
The claim is false; the government welfare system chief said Shah is not a beneficiary of the scheme; Shah is also not an Information Minister for Sindh province.
She is listed as a member on the Pakistani National Assembly website here as a federal lawmaker.
Below is a screenshot of her profile page on the website:
The Government of Sindh website lists Saeed Ghani as the Information Minister for the region.
Sania Nishtar, the chairperson of the BISP, denied Shah had received money from the scheme.
In this tweet dated January 18, 2020, Nishtar said: “I can confirm @ShahNafisa is not in the list of people who have benefited from @bisp_pakistan We should all rise above political differences to speak the truth; support reform and anti-corruption efforts in the interest of Pakistan and its most disadvantaged poor people.”
Shah, in this tweet published on January 17, 2020, called the social media posts a “vilification campaign” against her.
She said: “Here are some of the accounts engaged in vilification campaign against me. One of them apparently is PTI MPA #MominaWaheed. Intend reporting them all to the FIA Cyber crime wing. @Dr_FirdousPTI”.
Momina Waheed is an assembly member of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party.
The same false social media claim about Shah receiving beneficiary funds was reported here by Pakistani news outlet Naya Daur on January 18, 2020 and here by public broadcaster Radio Pakistan on January 18, 2020.
