Social Safety Net Programs (SSNPs) in Bangladesh provide monetary assistance to vulnerable populations through various cash transfer, food security, microcredit, and development programs. They aim to alleviate poverty and promote social harmony. While SSNPs have expanded in scope and coverage over time, challenges remain regarding their coordination across implementing agencies and ensuring all eligible recipients are reached.
Social Safety Net Programs (SSNPs) in Bangladesh provide monetary assistance to vulnerable populations through various cash transfer, food security, microcredit, and development programs. They aim to alleviate poverty and promote social harmony. While SSNPs have expanded in scope and coverage over time, challenges remain regarding their coordination across implementing agencies and ensuring all eligible recipients are reached.
Social Safety Net Programs (SSNPs) in Bangladesh provide monetary assistance to vulnerable populations through various cash transfer, food security, microcredit, and development programs. They aim to alleviate poverty and promote social harmony. While SSNPs have expanded in scope and coverage over time, challenges remain regarding their coordination across implementing agencies and ensuring all eligible recipients are reached.
Social Safety Net Programme (SSN): Social Safety Net Programme
(SSNP) is a programmatic mechanism for maintaining social harmony
through redistribution of resources towards the disadvantaged groups. It is supposed to play the role of social insurance through alleviating miseries of vulnerable poor or those at risk of being poor due to any irrevocable physical or economic shocks. The programs are mostly run in developing and under developed countries in different forms. The service and benefits of this program reaches to the people through different methodologies and approaches done by local authorities who are permitted to do so.
Social Safety Net Program (SSNP) in Bangladesh: Social Safety Net
Programs (SSNP’s) were introduced in Bangladesh with a view to helping the economically vulnerable communities or the group of people living in the extreme poverty or the people who are lagging back economically and socially by gender, location and religion. It was the primary objective of these programs to create a balanced social security through offering monetary support to the extreme poor people of different communities of the country in order to make them climb out of extreme poverty. It is not far from the present decade when social safety net programs were initiated by the state to assist the poor people. After the independence of Bangladesh in1971, there continued some initiatives of social welfare funding but these had been in a very small scale. In the nineties, these small welfare initiatives for the poor turned into social safety net programs and till then poor people of different communities have been getting monetary help in the name of these programs. Government is attempting to alleviate poverty by implementing various kinds of Social Safety Net Programs (SSNP). The social safety net measures are broadly divided into four fields: (i) Provision of special allowances for the various underprivileged sections of the population, so that the poor and disadvantaged people can tackle poverty effectively, (ii)Creation of employment opportunities for the poor people, (iii)Food security based activities to reduce the consequences of natural disasters; and (iv) Provision of education, health and training to make the new generation more capable and self-reliant. Presently, there are many Social Safety Net Programs (SSNP) schemes run by the government of Bangladesh in collaboration with the donors and NGOs. While the largest programmes are food-based, conditional cash transfers have become increasingly important. But fiscal constraints and some other loopholes inhibit the Social Safety Net Programs (SSNP)’s coverage and success to its desired level.
Social Safety Net Programs (SSNP’s) coverage in Bangladesh:
The Government of Bangladesh is conducting a total of 144 (including 10 newly added programmes) SSNPs according to the budget 2014- 15. These programmes are classified in four different categories namely: (i) Cash Transfer Programmes (22 programmes), (ii) Food Security Programmes (9programmes), (iii) Micro-Credit and Miscellaneous Funds Programmes (20 programmes), (iv) Development Sector Programmes (93 programmes including newly introduced 10 development programmes). However, many of these programmes do not qualify as social protection in the strict sense of the term as well as for the purpose of calculation of social protection index. Some of the categorized programs of SSN’s in Bangladesh involve the following: Unconditional Cash Transfers: Old Age Allowance, Allowances for the Widow, Destitute and Deserted Women, Allowances for the Financially Insolvent Disabled Public works: Employment Generation Program for the Poorest, Food for Work/Work for Money and Test Relief Humanitarian Relief: Vulnerable Group Feeding Conditional Cash Transfers: Towards a Child Benefit Scheme, Income Support Program for the Poorest (Jawtno)
Program allowances: The most remarkable SSNPs in progress in
Bangladesh are as follows: Old Age Allowance, allowances for the widow, deserted and destitute women, allowances for financially insolvent persons with disabilities, maternity allowance programme for the poor lactating mothers, allowances for urban, low-income lactating mothers, honorarium for freedom fighters, grants for residents in government orphanages and other Institutions, capitation grants for orphan students in non-government orphanages, block allocation for disaster management, pension for retired government employees and their families, ration for Shaheed families and injured freedom fighters, Vulnerable Group Feeding (VGF), Test Relief (TR) food, Gratuitous Relief (GR) food. However, the following major programmes are in progress: Old age allowance, allowance for the disabled, allowance for the widowed, deserted and destitute women, VGD, VGF, freedom fighter allowance, stipend for primary students, stipend for secondary and higher secondary students, stipend for disabled students, maternity allowance, and freedom fighter allowance etc. Old age and widow allowance formally started to run respectively in 1997 and 1998. Since the orientation of these two programs, the amount of money for the aged and the widowed has been increased to 500 TK, which started with 100 TK at the initial stage. Currently Social Safety Net programmes have achieved considerable expansion in terms of coverage, scope and types. Old people whose age is 62 and above years in case of female and 65 and above in case of male who have little or no income are considered eligible to receive old age allowance in Bangladesh. At the same time, the women who are widowed or husband deserted are considered eligible for widow allowance. In case of the selection of the beneficiaries of widow allowance, old, physically disabled are given the priority. It is a monthly cash subsidy provided by the Government to help the poor and vulnerable people to survive. 53% people who get old age allowance are unemployed and the percentages of the people working as farmers, day labours and others cover respectively 10% whereas housewife and beggar cover 14% and 3% consecutively.
Implementing Body: In Bangladesh Safety Net Programs are
implemented through a wide range of bodies including the Ministry of Social Welfare, the Ministry of Food and Disaster Management, the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs, Ministry of Primary and Mass Education and Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief. Under the supervision of these ministries many agencies, non- governmental organizations, and international bi-lateral and multi- lateral partners are also involved in the implementation process. In field level these Allowance or cash providing programs are implemented by the local authority - Upazila Chairman, UNO, Social Welfare Officer, Mayor, Councillor, UP Chairman, and UP Member. These engagements of multiple authorities have made the programs more dynamic but in many cases create coordination problems. Thus for better outcome there should be a smooth coordination between the implementing bodies. Problems concerning Social Safety Net Programs (SSNP’s): Although social safety nets are in existence for mass benefit and poverty reduction, it has become exposed to some barriers. Like, there are a lot of discrepancies regarding the age of the old age allowance receivers. Sometimes it is found that people increase their age in the National ID Card to get the allowance whereas in many cases some deserving candidates do not get the allowance because the age mentioned in their National ID Card are less than the age range for getting the allowance, the coverage of the allowances is not sufficient because of inadequacy of resource, Safety Net Programs are implemented by numerous agencies including many arms of government, non-governmental organizations, and international bi- lateral and multi-lateral partners. Since a number of authorities are involved in this process, it often creates overlap between programs and miscommunication.
Critical Analysis: Recent years have seen a perceptible increase in
interest in social safety nets within developing countries. Although many critics have questioned social safety-nets as something politically expedient, stigmatizing and highly inadequate to prime concerns of the poor, the necessity of such nets was never really discarded in practice. However, a new urgency is now visible as safety nets and the broader issue of social protection is increasingly being seen as a mainstream development concern. Originally, a narrow concept of public social safety nets operated amounting to non- contributing state transfers in cash or kind. These were sometimes universal, but more often targeted, to help the poor or those suffering from poverty to overcome their transient problems. More recent conceptualization, particularly for developing countries, argues for a broader scope. The portfolio of safety net programmes address different dimensions of vulnerability and it is important for an assessment exercise not to fall into the trap of comparing apples and oranges. For example, programmes addressing transient food insecurity may not compare well with programmes focused on addressing structural poverty. The appropriate result to look for in the former is consumption smoothening and the prevention of a further slide in poverty status while in the latter, the appropriate result is graduation. Safety Net Programs in Bangladesh are implemented by numerous agencies including many arms of government, non- governmental organizations, and international bi-lateral and multi- lateral partners. Since a number of authorities involved in this process, it often creates confusion and improper application of the program countrywide. An integrated coordination is needed for better result.
Conclusion: Though Bangladesh has achieved the status of a lower-
middle income country, the coverage of the social safety net programs are still limited. Effective Social Safety Net Programs (SSNP’s) are supposed to promote dynamic efficiency by alleviating the adverse socio-economic impact of structural reforms crucial for moving economic growth ahead. In this regard, SSNPs are not being able to fulfil the expectations as our study shows that they could not achieve any significant acceleration of the motion of economy of Bangladesh by bringing about positive socio -economic changes in the lives of the poor beneficiaries. So, further modification of the programs and their actions can turn the ongoing SSNPs into very effective programmes which will be able to achieve its goal of poverty reduction and higher graduation rate which is coming out of poor state to non-poor state of livelihood.
References: Ministry of Finance- http://www.mof.gov.bd/en/budget/14_15/safety_net/safety_net
Statistical Yearbook of Bangladesh 2014. 34th Edition. BBS, Dhaka-
The Revised Social Protection Index: Methodology and Handbook (2012). Asian Development Bank, Manila
World Bank Group-
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2019/04/29/social- safety-nets-in-bangladesh-help-reduce-poverty-and-improve-human- capital