Mostafa Kamal Majumder
As the duration of the coronavirus lockdown is in the fourth week in Bangladesh beginning on March 26, new categories of people vulnerable to hunger are emerging. They are normally not the people to ask for support from the society or the government to feed them. With economic activities coming to a halt, scope of earning livelihood of those dependent on small jobs or micro scale has stopped and the economic shock has passed endurance limits many people.The government has a social safety net programme. Under it currently about 3.75 million people are beneficiaries (about 750,000 women participants) of the vulnerable group development (VGD) programme from ultra-poor households which receive a monthly food ration combined with a package of development services. This social safety net programme is built in with the government’s annual budget.
At crisis times the government introduces open market sale of essentials like rice, lentils, edible oil and sugar to reach these essentials to needy people at cheaper prices. The programme is on even though it has been interrupted by crowding of people at distribution points which the government wants to discourage in view of the present coronavirus outbreak.
After the lockdown the government has announced stimulus packages worth Taka 77 billion to support the export-oriented and other industries plus the agriculture sector to overcome the economic shock. About 4.1 million garment workers are expected to benefit from the Taka 5 billion stimulus earmarked for the export-oriented industries which account for a significant portion of the country’s export earnings.
The lockdown, however, has affected all sectors. The small informal sectors are the hardest hit requiring support to be back to their own feet. They include the transport sector employing several million workers, the small shop keepers, hawkers, day labourers and thousands of people falling in the category of floating population in cities and towns. Yet there are other groups which should be enumerated for support by those who have been engaged by the government for doing the job.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Bangladesh Pratibandhi Kalyan Samity (BPKS) Abdus Sattar Dulal told this writer the other day that the thousands of samity members who earned their livelihoods doing small economic activities with their disabilities have been extremely hit as they have no income and have crossed their endurance limits. They are neither covered by the safety net programme of the government, nor listed as poor for whom rationed rice is made available by the government from time to time. They also cannot run after relief. Abdus Sattar Dulal initially supported them by distributing Taka 2000 to each family from the samity fund. But now he has run out of fund to give further assistance. With that support the BPKS members might have managed several days of feeding themselves and their family members. Now they should be going hungry, he laments. Despite their physical disabilities these people had never been burdens on the society. But the coronavirus lockdown has rendered them penniless.
Another group of people who have fallen into uncertainties are domestic migrant workers who moved from their homes to other districts or towns to earn their living. Some of them live in rented mess houses and in shelters provided by their employers. They thought the general holiday and the lockdown would end and they would resume their work for daily bread. Their long wait has become longer and with that they have spent up whatever savings they had in their hands. The electronic media have covered the stories of miseries of some such people in Dhaka and its suburb. But migrant seasonal workers are there in almost every district. With movement becoming restricted coverage of the plight of such people stranded in other districts has become extremely difficult.
Yet another large group comprise private orphanages run in almost all districts of Bangladesh. They rely on weekly, monthly or annual donations from well-to-do members of the society. With the movement of people becoming restricted, donations made to these charities have nearly stopped putting their orphan inmates and their teachers to the brink of hunger. These organisations are not covered under the safety net programme of the government, nor are their given allocations from the national or local government authorities. The managers of these orphanages literally find themselves helpless.
This week a new group of people have made appeals to the highest level of the government with open letters send to the new media for urgent help for their survival. This group is made up of teachers of private schools and madrasahs – hundred of thousands of those – who ordinarily get monthly remunerations out of tuition fees of students who are not coming to their institutions since the 18th of March when the government declared closure of educational institutions. They see the grim prospect of not being paid even in the month of May which will be covered by the holy month of Ramadan (fasting) when schools normally remain closed. In an open letter they have called upon the solvent school and madrasah managing committees to pay salary of teachers and urged the government to support the teachers and staffs of those institutions which will not be able to pay salary.
Apart from them there are thousands of day labourers, insolvent masons and carpenters plus their helpers who appear at daily labour markets at different corners of the metropolis every day for day-basis jobs for survival. Their employment has now come down to zero level as households no longer allow people other than family members inside homes. Most households in the metropolis have stopped their domestic helps from coming for work. Some families are doing this by paying the domestic aids their set remunerations others go by the no work no pay norm.
Local government institutions are best suited to identify these vulnerable groups of people and help them effectively so that relief meant for needy people do not fall into wrong hands.
(Mostafa Kamal Majumder is the editor of GreenWatch Dhaka online daily newspaper)