Poor people should not continue to be out of Covid relief

MANY poor people did not get the relief meant for them during the coronavirus pandemic because of corruption perpetrated by a section of local elected representatives. Community leaders at a virtual national dialogue brought the allegation against the local representatives. The aid through local government, in many cases, were distributed considering the recipients’ political affiliation or misappropriated by the thugs and the poor did not receive the necessary support. Even solvent people received relief. The government understood the situation, cancelled the assistance activities and suspended many UP chairmen and councillors.
The government had initially decided to give cash support to 50 lakh families whose breadwinners lost jobs because of the pandemic-induced slowdown. It extended the support to 36 lakh families after removing fake beneficiaries. Research showed among the people whose income declined because of the pandemic, 77.3 per cent did not receive food and cash support. A large number of workers in the informal sector remained outside of the relief programmes. Only 20.6 per cent of day-labours received the support, while it was 32.3 per cent among three-wheeler rickshaw and van pullers.
Among the poor and most deserving people, the hotline number opened for relief was not known except 1.6 per cent of the beneficiaries. Lack of an updated database had severely constrained the quality of delivery of the social safety net programmes. The absence of a central database for distributing relief packages was confirmed by government officials as well. The deputy commissioners tried to update the poverty database prepared by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics in 2014 to select the beneficiaries for relief schemes.
A number of recent studies have indicated that the percentage of poor people among the people doubled to more than 40 per cent during the current pandemic. The CBOs, NGOs, and media should work together with the government to ensure transparency, accountability in relief distribution.