Speakers at a webinar have stressed the need for introducing specific schemes under social protection programmes for the new poor who emerged amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
They have also emphasized the importance of preparing a complete database for social safety net programmes and paying adequate policy attention to the informal economic activities.
The speakers laid stress while speaking at a policy webinar titled 'Covid Impact and Social Protection Challenges: Urban and the New Poor' organised by Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) on Thursday evening,
Member of General Economics Division (GED) of Planning Commission Dr Shamsul Alam, Global Lead for Social Assistance of the World Bank Ugo Gentilini, CEO of Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund Qazi Azmat Isa, Chief of Social Policy, Evidence and Evaluation, UNICEF Nepal Usha Mishra and Executive Director of BRAC Bangladesh Asif Saleh took part in the discussion meeting moderated by Executive Chairman of PPRC Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman.
At the beginning of the event, Dr Rahman presented a keynote paper titled 'Covid-19 crisis and new vulnerabilities: Urgency of rethinking social protection' which highlighted the findings of a study conducted by PPRC and Brac Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD).
He said four vulnerabilities emerged due to the Covid-19 namely earnings uncertainty of informal occupations, rising non-food expenditure burdens for low-income urban people, eroded financial coping capacity and the new poor who are unaddressed by the social protection.
Income level of the people declined significantly while non-food expenditure increased by 98 per cent in the last one year mainly due to rising cost of house rent, healthcare, transportation and utilities, he added.
"A new candidate for social protection, households who slipped into poverty and were unable to regain pre-Covid income levels one year into the crisis," the keynote paper said and added: "The PPRC-BIGD study, extrapolating from its survey data, estimated the national size of this group at 24.5 million in March 2021."
Asif Saleh said the new poor are not a homogeneous category that's why 'one-size-fits-all' approach will not work to address their problems.
He described BRAC's response focusing on specific categories of the new poor such as returnee migrants, urban families forced to relocate to other urban or rural areas without any livelihood strategy.
Dr Shamsul Alam said the new poor have emerged all of a sudden as a result they are somewhat unaddressed in social protection. "The number of poverty-stricken people is not static that changes with various incidents including natural calamities and pandemic."
Regarding the new poor, he also said no one actually knew that a calamity like Covid-19 was emerging.
"When the situation was returning to normal with the declining infection rate, no one in the government and civil society could think about the new poor induced by the Covid resurgence," he said.
Mr Alam also underscored the need for a complete database of households to make prompt responses from social protection during a crisis moment.
Summarizing the discussion, Hossain Zillur Rahman identified three new priorities--urban social protection, addressing the 'new poor' and a new policy look--in the informal economy.
He noted that 55 per cent of Bangladesh's GDP comes from the service sector and much of this sector is constituted of various informal enterprises and activities.
The webinar concluded with the PPRC-BIGD research publication titled 'Livelihoods, Coping and Recovery during Covid-19 Crisis.'
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