The government project to prepare the country’s first-ever poverty registry has not been completed in more than seven years. The data collected for it has already become useless. The project the National Household Database (NHD) is to streamline the beneficiary selection process for social safety net programmes by gathering socioeconomic data of each household in the country. The Tk 328 crore project began in 2013 and was supposed to be completed by 2017. Later the deadline was extended to June 2021 and cost ballooned to Tk 727 crore. Delay of the project not only deprives poor households of benefits targeted at them but also renders the list outdated due to the coronavirus pandemic.
After taking four years to work out the modes of operation, BBS collected the socioeconomic information of 3.5 crore households from 64 districts in three phases in 2017 and 2018. Without periodic upgradation, the database may not serve the people. A major purpose of the NHD was to simplify the selection of beneficiaries for the government’s various social safety net programmes targeting the ultra-poor and help avoid overlapping. Lack of accurate, organised data to reach the poor has been a major challenge for the government, which became more evident during the Covid-19 pandemic that has been ravaging Bangladesh since March 2020.
In July last year, a staggering two-thirds of 50 lakh poor families who were hit hard by the pandemic-induced shutdown did not receive Tk 2,500 each in cash support from a government fund of Tk 1,250 crore because of a flawed beneficiaries’ list. Due to the delays, the NHD project has lost relevance significantly as the socioeconomic conditions of households countrywide have changed drastically in the pandemic, with many more “new poor” now added to the rank of the poor.
We do not have a people’s government to help the people. The plunderers are safe and secure. We have a heartless and mindless government. But the protectors of the government do not find competent people to form a competent government.
They see all of us as incompetent and future thieves so it is good to have the present thieves.
