Heartbreakingly, recent earthquake of 25 April 2015 took more than 8 thousand lives and damaged hundreds of houses. Till date, many people are still buried in the debris. The people are at dire need of water, food, medicine, shelter and clothes. Although the government has tried its best to support the victims and also taking measures to avoid possible outbreak of disease, but people of worst effected earthquake areas at large are at shock and traumatized due to their loss of livelihood, relatives and more importantly their shelter. Nepal, as one of the traditionally poorest country, has been struggling to address this type of large disaster and therefore request for an international financial assistance to reconstruct the infrastructures and revitalized basic services.
Current crisis in Nepal requires an immediate action to counter against the fall of GDP, decrease of wages and increase of unemployment. Soon it is expected that there will a potential tensions of the needs for income security and the apparent non-affordability. Therefore, it should be addressed by i) assist households to better manage risks and vulnerability, ii) provide support to critically poor households to meet their livelihoods.
One of the immediate approaches could be to integrate components of relief, reconstruction and poverty reduction. Fairly similar to the norms of social protection, the actions in response to vulnerability, risk and deprivations deemed in earthquake damaged area. One of the possibilities is to transfer cash universally to the victims of the earthquake. However resource of government is quite limited and mostly is being spent in the relief operation. Therefore unconditional cash transfer may not be affordable. Since the forthcoming priority of the government will be reconstruction of the damaged public asset, social protection through public works can be an effective tool to address risk, vulnerability and chronic poverty.
Traditionally social protection (SP) does also takes into account of providing income security for individual at crisis. In order to achieve the outcome of smooth consumption of basic needs and to create or rehabilitate community physical or natural capital, the most effective SP type would be cash for work; similar to the Karnali Employment Programme.
Cost analysis of social protection is argued to be unreasonable by a) quality of asset created is relatively lower b) whether country can invest to such programme in traditionally poor country. Most of the SP programming fosters to use intensive human capital to create assets. The use of externally material should be kept low in order to enhance the wage. There are always a trade between costs and impacts on poverty reduction and economic growth. Since current role of government is to provide relief with an objective to economic growth, an appropriate action will be protect human, increase socially and economically profitable assets and graduate poor and vulnerable in longer run. Therefore first stage to respond the current crisis will be build houses (low cost housing) so that most needy people get their shelter.
People can be engaged to build their own houses and obtain wage. Furthermore, people will be engaged as labour to create / revive community’s physical and natural capital. Targeting only poor and vulnerable may be controversial in the countries like Nepal as poverty head counts are higher and income profiles are lower. Additionally, people do require some relief in post-earthquake scenario until their livelihood does not return to normalcy. Although self-targeting may not be effective principally in the beginning but it can target only needy household if the rates of the wage is kept low but quite sufficient to survive.
The central question arises ‘how’, ‘how much’ and ‘how quickly’ we can introduce the social protection through public works programme in the current humanitarian crisis. Of course, we require a strong political consensus, good governance and strong financial support. To initiate the activities, Operational Guidelines of Karnali Employment Programme can be replicated with some modification.
[Please use word file that I submitted along with)
Heartbreakingly, recent earthquake of 25 April 2015 took more than 8 thousand lives and damaged hundreds of houses. Till date, many people are still buried in the debris. The people are at dire need of water, food, medicine, shelter and clothes. Although the government has tried its best to support the victims and also taking measures to avoid possible outbreak of disease, but people of worst effected earthquake areas at large are at shock and traumatized due to their loss of livelihood, relatives and more importantly their shelter. Nepal, as one of the traditionally poorest country, has been struggling to address this type of large disaster and therefore request for an international financial assistance to reconstruct the infrastructures and revitalized basic services.
Current crisis in Nepal requires an immediate action to counter against the fall of GDP, decrease of wages and increase of unemployment. Soon it is expected that there will a potential tensions of the needs for income security and the apparent non-affordability. Therefore, it should be addressed by i) assist households to better manage risks and vulnerability, ii) provide support to critically poor households to meet their livelihoods.
One of the immediate approaches could be to integrate components of relief, reconstruction and poverty reduction. Fairly similar to the norms of social protection, the actions in response to vulnerability, risk and deprivations deemed in earthquake damaged area. One of the possibilities is to transfer cash universally to the victims of the earthquake. However resource of government is quite limited and mostly is being spent in the relief operation. Therefore unconditional cash transfer may not be affordable. Since the forthcoming priority of the government will be reconstruction of the damaged public asset, social protection through public works can be an effective tool to address risk, vulnerability and chronic poverty.
Traditionally social protection (SP) does also takes into account of providing income security for individual at crisis. In order to achieve the outcome of smooth consumption of basic needs and to create or rehabilitate community physical or natural capital, the most effective SP type would be cash for work; similar to the Karnali Employment Programme.
Cost analysis of social protection is argued to be unreasonable by a) quality of asset created is relatively lower b) whether country can invest to such programme in traditionally poor country. Most of the SP programming fosters to use intensive human capital to create assets. The use of externally material should be kept low in order to enhance the wage. There are always a trade between costs and impacts on poverty reduction and economic growth. Since current role of government is to provide relief with an objective to economic growth, an appropriate action will be protect human, increase socially and economically profitable assets and graduate poor and vulnerable in longer run. Therefore first stage to respond the current crisis will be build houses (low cost housing) so that most needy people get their shelter.
People can be engaged to build their own houses and obtain wage. Furthermore, people will be engaged as labour to create / revive community’s physical and natural capital. Targeting only poor and vulnerable may be controversial in the countries like Nepal as poverty head counts are higher and income profiles are lower. Additionally, people do require some relief in post-earthquake scenario until their livelihood does not return to normalcy. Although self-targeting may not be effective principally in the beginning but it can target only needy household if the rates of the wage is kept low but quite sufficient to survive.
The central question arises ‘how’, ‘how much’ and ‘how quickly’ we can introduce the social protection through public works programme in the current humanitarian crisis. Of course, we require a strong political consensus, good governance and strong financial support. To initiate the activities, Operational Guidelines of Karnali Employment Programme can be replicated with some modification.
Related story
Haruwa-Charuwa call for introducing rehabilitation programs
