Fresh plan to replace job scheme with lesser coverage

Economists term the move unwise
After dithering over the 100-day employment generation scheme for about three months, the Awami League-led government is set to replace it with a programme of lesser coverage — a move that economists term a backward journey in view of the necessity of wider coverage of areas and population.
Sources in the food and finance ministries said an amount of Tk 1,200 crore might be earmarked in the next budget for undertaking the new programme for the ultra-poor mostly concentrated in 78 upazilas across the country.
The finance ministry suggested the programme for the ultra-poor in the light of poverty mapping by the World Bank and the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics but the food ministry was ‘yet to fully agree’ to the proposal, the sources admitted.
‘We will have more discussions with the finance ministry before announcement of the next budget on how to better the programme and increase its coverage,’ a food ministry official said without detailing it.
After assuming office on January 6, the Awami League-led government had been in two minds about whether to continue the Tk 2,000-crore employment scheme introduced by the interim government in 2008-09 fiscal. It was the country’s largest social protection programme covering around 2 million people.
After a meeting with the grassroots representatives and implementing agencies in March, food minister Mohammad Abdur Razzak announced the decision to implement the second phase of the programme. Later the government scrapped it, alleging ‘massive corruption’ in the implementation process of the first phase of the programme during September-November lean period.
However, the programme has reached the extreme poor and is having a positive effect on household welfare but there are some areas in its design that needs attention in order to further improve its performance, concludes a recent joint evaluation by the Food and Agriculture Organisation and BRAC Research Group.
About the cancellation of the employment guarantee scheme, economists insisted that the government should have continued the programme considering the vulnerability of the people to calamities and also the implications of the current global recession.
‘In a country like Bangladesh, there should be an ongoing programme for providing the poor and vulnerable people with income opportunities. It should focus on productive employment, not like lump-sum donations for the poor,’ Mahbub Ullah, a professor of development studies at Dhaka University, told New Age.
Contradicting the allegation of massive pilferage in the implementation of the programme, he referred to some other economists who worked at the grassroots level and said the programme in its first phase was ‘by and large’ successful, thanks to the enthusiasm among the young officers and people’s representatives at the grassroots. He also pointed out that there should also be an endowment fund for coping with the challenges of employment due to global recession.
‘It will not be wise to drop such a programme. However, employment generation should be part and parcel of the overall development with the involvement of the local government representatives,’ said Ananya Raihan, executive director of research organisation D-Net.
Underscoring the importance of devolution of power for development at the grassroots level, he said that the employment guarantee scheme had been successful in India as it involved local government institutions there. About the upper hand of the members of parliament in development activities, Ananya said such institutional arrangement would hamper implementation of programmes such as employment scheme.
‘The recent 100-day employment generation programme [has been] an important addition to the government’s existing set of safety net programmes,’ Xian Zhu, the World Bank country director for Bangladesh, said at a workshop on the programme in the past week.

Courtesy of NewAgebd