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Editorial

Government's job scheme for the extreme poor

Whichever is the implementing agency it must deliver
6 March 2010, 18:00 PM
EDITORIAL
THE government's Employment Generation Programme (EGP) targeting 12.5 lakh ultra-poor of which at least one-third beneficiary will be women has got underway from March 4. This follows vacation of High Court stay order on the programme issued on February 28. When the Food and Disaster Management Ministry decided to appoint officials at upazila level and put them in charge of the committees to implement EGP instead of the upazila chairmen who were heading them, the latter filed a writ petition before the HC contesting the government decision. This resulted in the stay order which the HC has since vacated on an appeal from the government considering the pressing need for the scheme to catch up with the beginning of the lean season. The programme has all the elements of a good, pro-poor safety net livelihood line being thrown to the extreme poor for 40 days during the March-April lean season. But an undertaking on such a scale involving Tk 600 crore worth of cash to be distributed on a daily basis covering a very short span of time could easily lend itself to corruption. That is why there is likely to be an interplay of interests to take charge of the programme, although different agencies would like to be credited for having associated with it and achieved success on it. Not unsurprisingly, therefore, one saw a tussle between the Union Parishad chairmen who used to head the EGP committees and the Ministry of Food and Disaster Management which is placing upazila level bureaucrats at the head of the implementing committees. In principle, let's make it clear though, we are for elected local leaderships to take charge of such a pro-people project rather than bureaucrats. It is true historically speaking that elected local leaders have often been under pressure to please their constituencies. Whether they will use the money to strengthen their hold on people keeping in view the Union Parishad and upazila elections is something that cannot be brushed aside. But again because of the election they also likely to be cautious to avert acquiring any stigma of corruption, an obligation and compunction that bureaucrats need not have to do with. Essentially, we believe in strengthened and empowered local bodies with an improved gender balance to be the cornerstone of participatory democracy from the grassroots upwards. Already, the MPs have been given an advisory role in the local bodies and now the bureaucrats are taking a slice of what should be their function. That said, we would urge the Union Parishad chairmen to keep their protests in check and allow the employment generation programme to go ahead given its very short gestation period. At the end of which after all its results or lack of them will be for all to see. The revised arrangement could be on test for a year. It is in this view of the matter that the programme should be constantly monitored, so it does not degenerate into doles that too with cuts pocketed by the corrupt. All the canal digging, dam and road construction, elevating grounds of educational and religious institutes as cyclone shelter premises and preparation of organic fertilisers that are planned through the programme are tangible physical targets which if not met can be easily audited, responsibility fixed and infractions punished.

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