Finance minister AMA Muhith proposed some new initiatives for the disabled and city cleaners under the social protection programmes keeping the ongoing safety net programmes as usual in the proposed budget for fiscal year 2014-15.
Of the fresh measures, an allocation of Tk 200 million has been proposed for the trust established for the disabled with neuro-developmental disorder and Tk 50 million to the trust for the welfare of the physically challenged.
The finance minister also allocated a special fund for the city cleaners to take up housing projects for them.
He said decision has been taken to increase the number of disabled beneficiaries to 0.4 million and that of disabled students to 50,000 in FY 2014-15.
"We will institutionalise the facilities for disabled people. The rate and coverage of stipends for insolvent disabled and disabled students will be enhanced," said the finance minister in his budget speech Thursday.
Construction work of houses for the cleaning staff of Dhaka City Corporation is underway, he said adding a special allocation of Tk. 500 million has been proposed in the budget to take up similar programme in the divisional and district towns.
The government allocated more than Tk 253.71 billion or 11.40 per cent of over Tk 2.22 trillion budget outlay proposed for the FY 2013-14 for social safety net programmes (SSNPs). In the proposed budget number of beneficiaries of the government's SSNPs was 68.03 million. The number was 70.86 million in the previous year.
In his budget speech he said, we will lay special emphasis to make safety net programmes more target oriented with a view to accelerating the poverty eradication process. We have almost finalized the 'National Social Protection Strategy' (NSPS) he said adding at the same time, steps have been taken to prepare a list of hard-core poor and a 'National Population Register' for proper identification of beneficiaries of social safety net programmes.
The minister said the government has set the target to bring down poverty to 13.5 per cent by 2021 and 10.2 per cent by 2021. Not only that, extreme poverty will be totally eliminated from this country by 2018.
"Budget proposal contains various programmes worth Tk 15 billion to eradicate extreme poverty," he added.
He categorised various social safety net programmes into four broad groups: enhancing capacity of the ultra-poor to face poverty by providing them with special allowances, creating employment and self-employment opportunities for the hardcore poor through micro-credit operations, ensuring food security for the hardcore poor by providing food assistance free of cost or at a nominal cost, creating capacity of the hardcore poor to deal with poverty by providing them with education, training and healthcare services.
