The Provincial Zakat Council release of five crore 25 lakh for educational scholarships

Lahore: The Provincial Zakat Council has given approval to the release of five crore 25 lakh and 65 thousand rupees for educational scholarships for religious seminaries and educational scholarships general and directed that this amount should immediately be released for deserving male and female students.

This was decided at 161^st meeting of the Council presided over by Chairman Provincial Zakat Council Justice® Akhtar Hassan, here today.  Provincial Secretary Zakat & Ushr Habibur Rehman Gillani, Administrator Zakat Punjab Muhammad Yousaf Butt, Deputy Administrator Zakat(Field) Rana Muhammad Sajjad Babar, Members Council Saeed Ahmed Ansari, Muhammad Azhar Farooqui, Mst.Tanveer Kausar and senior officers of Finance, Local Government and Social Welfare departments attended the meeting.

The meeting gave approval to two crore 42 lakh and 66 thousand rupees to district zakat committees for 136 educational institutions of 15 districts of the province under regular educational scholarships through which 4823 male and female students will be benefit. Similarly, approval to the release of two crore and 83 lakh rupees was also given for 892 religious seminaries of 12 districts of the province under the head of educational scholarships for religious seminaries through which 12329 male and female students will benefit.

Secretary Zakat & Ushr Habibur Rehman Gillani decided in the meeting that the concerned district zakat committees should submit their applications before July 31 and February 1 for ensuring timely release of the amounts allocated for religious seminaries and general educational institutions otherwise these amounts will be distributed among other district zakat committees.

The meeting decided that the amounts given under the head of educational scholarships general and zakat paid staff posted in the districts should be distributed through mobile banking so that they should not face any delay in getting these amounts and this scheme should be started in five districts of the province as a pilot project.

The meeting also decided to increase the financial assistance being given to the deserving persons under self-employment scheme and gave approval to increase its limit from two lakh rupees to three lakh rupees so that the persons benefitting from this scheme could start their business in a better manner.

Members of the Council also discussed matters regarding provision of autorickshaw to deserving persons and sewing machines to deserving women under central pool(social rehabilitation scheme) and it was decided that initially 70 rickshaw and sewing machines worth one crore rupees  should be distributed among deserving men and women at divisional level in nine districts which include Lahore, Gujranwala, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Multan, Sahiwal, Bahawalpur and Dera Ghazi Khan and a committee has also been constituted to give final shape to all these matters.