New Age
Staff Correspondent | Jul 06,2020
Recipients of Tk 2,500 cash aid, under the government’s initiative to provide cash assistance to 50 lakh poor families during the coronavirus pandemic, will now be allowed to use bank accounts to get the benefit.
The Bangladesh Bank on Monday issued an instruction in this regard to the chief executives of all scheduled banks asking them to facilitate the opening of bank accounts for the poor at Tk 10 as deposit.
Attestation by the upazila nirbahi officer and provision of the national identity number was made mandatory for opening the accounts, the BB circular said.
The facility will be available only for people who do not have mobile phones or the scope of opening MFS accounts.
Such bank accountholders would be able to receive the cash assistance through cash vouchers if they did not have any cheque books.
There would be no requirement to opening new bank accounts if any of the beneficiaries already had a bank account.
Holders of valid MFS accounts would receive the cash aid through the MFS accounts.
The government moved to disburse the cash aid among poor families before the Eid-ul-Fitr but disbursement stopped after it was detected that eight lakh out of the 50 lakh MFS account numbers had more than one enlistment in the government’s database.
