The government has planned to introduce “smart card” for the ultra-poor to bolster its social safety net schemes and strengthen cooperation among ministries directly linked with such programmes.
A meeting chaired by Cabinet Secretary A Abdul Aziz last month discussed in this regard and instructed the ministries and divisions concerned to work on it. The social safety net programmes aim to cut poverty rate.
Statistics say the number of ultra poor at present is 26.06 million, which is 17.6 percent of the population. In 2005, it was 25.1 percent. According to the Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2010 conducted by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the country has 46.79 million poor people, which is 31.5 percent of the population.
The country is working to halve the number by 2015 to attain the millennium development goal sponsored by the UN.
An idea of the BBS, the smart cards will help the government strengthen its social safety net activities further, BBS officials said.
It has been alleged that these programmes are being overlapped because of a lack of coordination among ministries, which is causing problems for the government to get expected results from programmes like food for work, direct cash distribution, widow and old age allowances, and 100 days employment generation work.
It is also causing misuses of fund.
The Food Division, Disaster Management Division, and the ministries of social welfare, education and health are mainly running the social safety net programmes.
The focus on social safety net has been increased in recent years. About 6.8 percent of the Tk 1.6-trillion budget has been kept aside to run the programme in 2011-12 fiscal year. The amount was 7.3 percent in the last fiscal year, which had a budget of Tk 1.3 trillion.
BBS officials said they suggested taking help of the Election Commission in introducing smart card. The EC is now overseeing the national identity card project undertaken in 2008.
BBS Director General Shahjahan Ali Mollah said the coverage of social safety programme was widened to 24.57 percent in 2010 from 13.06 percent in 2005. He, however, put the inflow of remittance as the first and prime reason for the improvement in poverty situation.
The Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2010 by the BBS revealed that the country had cut down poverty by about 8.5 percentage points since 2005. Almost 13 million people were lifted out of poverty during this period as poverty declined to 31.5 percent from 40 percent in 2005.
Rangpur has the highest poverty rate, which is 42.3 percent, while the rate is lowest in Chittagong at 26.2 percent. In Barisal it is 39.4 percent, in Dhaka 30.5 percent, in Khulna 32.1 percent, in Rajshahi 29.7 percent, and in Sylhet 28.1 percent.
-With Daily Sun input
