TCB support must reach the most deserving people

At least 39.5 per cent of the eligible poverty-stricken households didn’t get family cards issued by the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) to buy certain food items at subsidised prices. Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) on Thursday underlined corruption, irregularities and lack of proper information as the key reasons behind exclusion of the families.
Around 80.4 per cent of the survey respondents who didn’t get the TCB’s family cards think corruption and irregularities are the main cause of their exclusion. Besides, about 14.1 per cent have no idea why they are not in the list while 5.5 per cent of the respondents said that they voluntarily refused to take the cards. The root causes behind exclusion of the eligible beneficiaries, as identified by TIB, are inadequate dissemination of information about the family card among the target population, beneficiary’s lack of connection with powerful people, political consideration, and inclusion of people who don’t need such support, giving multiple cards to same families, bribery, etc.
Nearly all the country’s low-income people could be brought under the TCB’s initiative but 39.5 per cent of them were deprived of their rights due to political influence, mismanagement, lack of transparency and above all widespread corruption. The programme had the potential to cover about 40-50 million or 25-30 per cent of the population in the country.
But lack of preparation, mismanagement, lack of transparency and irregularities held back the programme’s benefits from reaching the underprivileged people. The TCB decided to provide affordable products through family cards to about 10 million low-income families in March-April 2022, where 3.85 million beneficiaries were included from the Tk 2,500 cash assistance programme during the pandemic, while 6.15 million were new beneficiaries.
The anti-corruption watchdog suggested redesigning food packages as per the ability and need of the beneficiaries, maintaining the quality of product through proper testing, increasing the number of sale points to take the programme closer to cardholders, introducing hotline numbers to receive complaints from the support recipients, penalising the people involved in irregularities in the distribution process, etc.
We endorse the TIB’s suggestions to reach the TCB to the most deserving people.