Lack of statistics, poor delivery deprived people of stimulus packages: CPD

The lack of accurate statistics, errors in finding beneficiaries, weakness in the delivery system with lack of institutional capacity deprived many people of the stimulus packages declared by the government in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, economists said on Sunday at the opening session of a two-day conference in Dhaka.

The Citizen's Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh, along with Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) organised the conference titled "Bangladesh Emerging from the Pandemic: Coping Experiences and Policy Choices" at Brac Inn Centre in the capital.

Advocate Sultana Kamal, Core Group Member, Citizen's Platform and Member presided over the opening session of the event and said, "We have severe flaws in accumulating data. We have little clue when we try to determie the basis of what our policy makers say." 

She also said that there is no real data on where the Covid has hit and the extent of pandemic-induced damages.

"There are no government initiatives based on data. They do present many things but they do it without any accountability," she added.

Distinguished Fellow of CPD Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, in his keynote speech in the program, said, "When the coronavirus was first detected in the country, many programs were undertaken without proper policies and directives." 

Terming the government's stimulus packages as smaller in proportion with the GDP, he said, "More loan-based stimulus packages were announced compared to cash incentive and food support. Enough number of people in need did not receive help. There was also lacking in distributing the aid."  

The government announced stimulus packages were not enough to support the marginalised communities, the newly impoverished people, people who migrated due to pandemic, people of informal sectors and small and medium entrepreneurs, the experts observed in the event. 

In his paper titled "The Covid Consensus: Bangladesh's Experiences in Dealing with the Pandemic", Dr Debapriya said the Covid-19 crisis affected disadvantaged people more adversely and disproportionately.

A large number of people lost their jobs and earnings due to Covid-19 and were adjusted with reappointment at lower wages. People shifted to lower skilled jobs, which reduced productivity and earnings.

He explained the adverse impact of Covid-19 on some socio-economic indicators and said, people reduced the number of items in the meal, reduced intake of protein and finally reduced the number of meals per day, to cope with the loss in earnings.

Reduction of food intake in turn hampered nutrition requirement, skills and productivity.

Planning Minister MA Mannan said the government is working to recover the impact of Covid-19 by ensuring healthcare services through community clinics. 

The minister agreed about some mismanagement in their fight against Covid-19 and said, "We had some problems with vaccination due to uncertainty of sources. Fund crisis was not the reason behind the complexities regarding the slower rate of vaccination." 

He also said the economy and people's earnings are recovering.

"Our focus is to reduce poverty and the development of living standards," the minister said.

Sudipto Mukerjee, resident representative, UNDP, Bangladesh, said that Bangladesh is a shining example of resilience from ashes but the development did not come without some costs.

Rapid GDP growth in Bangladesh needs to be seen together with other indicators like inequality and environmental damage created by unclean production systems.

Rate of job creation, private investment, and share of income of the poorest quartiles requires improvement in Bangladesh.

He said, inequality has seen a rising trend in Bangladesh. The Covid-19 has exposed many holes that need quickly to be plugged ensuring both the quality and quantity.

He identified the lack of information as a serious problem in Bangladesh and said there are flaws in the information provided by the government. The lack of information caused problems in identifying the beneficiaries of the social security programmes.

He also said Bangladesh has lowest per capita allocations on the public health services, and the most of the spending is out of pocket. The government needs to increase the allocation.

Dr Fahmida Khatun, Executive Director, CPD, recommended an increase of investment in the health sector and said, "Medical treatment should be made easily available. We need to ensure that the poor are getting free healthcare, for which a bigger investment is required."

Speakers for resuming in-person classes

Speakers at another session titled "Bangladesh Emerging from the Pandemic Coping Experiences and Policy Choices" urged the Education Ministry to start in-person classes fully as early as possible to check drop out and to recover learning losses in the country. 

The students from poor families could not attend the online classes due to lack of digital devices and internet facilities. They might drop out if the government does not take immediate steps to resume in-person classes, they said.  

Rasheda K Chowdhury, executive director of Campaign for Popular Education, presided over the session. She said there is a huge data gap in Bangladesh as we do not have any idea about the drop out and learning losses due to Covid-19 pandemic.

We are losing a generation as a good number of children are growing with inadequate knowledge. Everything can be returned but education," she said.

Dr Safiqul Islam, former director of BRAC's education programme said, the poor students are in learning losses as they could not attend the online classes since March 2020. So, the Education Ministry should resume in-person classes fully considering the poor students.

Najeeba Mohammed Altaf, and Fabiha Bushra Khan, research associate of the CPD presented the keynotes papers.

Najeeba Mohammed Altaf said, more than half of student respondents who perceived to be at risk of dropping out in the post-Covid 19 era were female.

Students at the secondary and college level of education were 2.6 times more likely to drop out of schools in the post-Covid 19 period. Among the primary school respondents, students from slums were most at risk of losing out on education post-lockdown. 

She conducted a research titled "Education during Covid-19: Impact, coping and policy support" among 1600 households and 18,11 students in 8 divisional cities. 

She found that students from coastal areas have the highest risk of being dropped out of education completely. Increased child marriages disproportionately impact girls and are likely to throw girls out of education.

Fabiha Bushra Khan in her keynote said, due to low levels of digital literacy, the marginalized communities experienced difficulties to register for vaccines and vaccine distribution was also inadequate to cover at the grass root levels. 

There were difficulties in lowering the minimum eligibility age for the vaccines to 18 as many between the age of 18-25 years were yet to receive their NIDs. 

She conducted her research on "Impact on Vaccination, Food Consumption, Maternal and Child Health" among 1600 households in 9 marginalized groups in February this year.