A media report on Tuesday said the proposed budget for 2021-22 is not worker-friendly and it has not addressed the safety issues of people who remain unemployed in different sectors after losing their jobs and income sources at home or abroad during the Covid-19 pandemic period. The report has quoted the findings of a study carried out by Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS) which said the budget has not made enough allocations for workers who have lost jobs in small businesses while workers in rural informal sectors mostly remained unaccounted for.
We have more new poor this time losing their income sources or experiencing a sharp fall in their income level. Hit hard by Covid-19, the poor suffered the worst last year and are poised to endure more such sufferings this year despite there being a vast social safety net programme and other special allocations to support the needy. Most such funds remained unused last time because of poor government capacity, inefficiency and lack of an effective system to reach the needy. What is noticeable is that the budget has huge packages of allocations for owners but workers have no package for livelihoods.
For example over 90 percent of 40 lakh domestic workers have lost jobs and most of them are now without work. Over 25 lakh people in hotels and restaurant services lost jobs. Budget allocation for such financially insolvent people is not clearly defined. A large number of workers in shopping malls, groceries, book binding, transportation and fishing are also jobless but there is no clear plan nor a delivery system to make sure that they get livelihood support. We have a highly corrupt system where agents and party men eat up most such funds at the distribution level.
We would say a fair system must be developed to reach government support to people without jobs. We must shed luxuries to save people. It needs no mention that we have a huge Tk 6.25 trillion budget this year and we can rightly hope that saving people must be high on priority. BILS report has said only Tk 1068 crore was spent out of an allocation of Tk 2,500 crore as food assistance for financially insolvent people. Similarly only half of Tk 815 crore funds were disbursed under the social safety net programmes. Tk 5 crore was disbursed out of Tk 1,500 crore meant for unemployed workers. So allocation alone is not enough, we must make sure the allocated money reaches the needy.
