The ineligible beneficiaries of the social safety net programme meant for elderlies and widows eat up around Tk 1,500 crore every year because of poor targeting and administrative weakness, according to the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD).

Bangladesh authorities must expand services to help injured or ill returnee migrants

Why cut back on public food distribution programmes when they are needed the most?

Scaling up public food distribution programmes for the poor and the vulnerable is the need of the hour -- given the cost of living crisis. But the government seems to be shying away from stepping up to this task.

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal today proposed increasing the allocation by 5.5 per cent year-on-year for social safety net programmes carried out by the government.

The government will broaden its social safety net programmes in the upcoming national budget to continue support to the country’s marginalised population, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said yesterday.

The government is committed to using the long-overdue National Household Database (NHD) from the next fiscal year to better target the social safety net programmes, in a development that can infuse dynamism in the flat scheme.

Shamsul Huda, a beneficiary of the government’s social safety net programmes, lives in a rickety little tin- shack in Noboganga area under Paba upazila of Rajshahi.

In circuses, whenever artists perform the tightrope walking stunt, underneath them are wide nets to prevent them from falling to the ground and avoiding potentially life-threatening injuries -- lest they lose their balance on the thin rope and falls over.