[ad_1]
Six months is the time required by the Ministry of Social Affairs to determine who are the 23% of the people who have fallen into the category of “extreme poverty.” The work will take a long time, due to the absence of the required data and the lack of volunteers, but it will negatively affect the identification of those in need and, therefore, the direction of aid in the face of the worsening crisis.
Estimates from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) indicate that the proportion of poor people in Lebanon will reach 55% in 2020 compared to 28% the previous year, and that the percentage of people living in extreme poverty will increase from 8% to 23%. In other words, the total number of poor people can reach 1.1 million people according to the lowest poverty line and 2.7 million people according to the highest poverty line. According to the report, the number of people living in extreme poverty is expected to increase by 750,000.
Who are these 23%? What is your average income? How will they be insured? There is no answer to these questions. The data necessary to identify those categorized as “extreme poverty” is lacking. How can a country that does not know the poor of its land direct support and aid, if it wants to get out of the circle of patronage? Failure to complete files is often justified by understaffing or complicated and time-consuming procedures. The repeated arguments turn the issue into a generalized crisis of “bombing” that leads to a great slowdown in the implementation of what is required, and the absence of a decision that grants rights to citizens. For example, since 2003 there has been talk of a social protection strategy that provides basic services to citizens for free or at a minimal cost. This is not an impossible “miracle act”. In countries whose economic situation is worse than the Lebanese one, and which suffer much harsher political-economic pressures, the strategy of protection of “holy things” is considered. Although the Hassan Diab government removed the issue and set last August as the date to send the draft, the information and data necessary to draft the draft have not yet been collected (see the issue “Al-Akhbar ”, September 7, 2020).
The Director General of the Ministry of Social Affairs, Judge Abdullah Ahmed, confirms that “the file of the social protection strategy is currently being reorganized despite all obstacles.” But its approval “does not mean that the issue of extreme poverty is resolved.” In principle, the “strategy” provides the majority of human rights services to citizens, “but imposes a modest portion of the bill on them, which some will not be able to pay.” From here, there is a need to develop a social safety net, “to save those who cannot pay the difference in hospital or education bill through food aid and cash samples.” At present, aid is being provided to 43,000 people registered in the “National Program to Support the Poorest Families”. That was before the new statistics, “and an estimate of the extreme poverty rate that rises to 23%, and the associations asked us for personal data for direct spending,” says Ahmed, speaking of the new amounts assigned by agencies. international organizations for the program, “such as the European Union, which has allocated 50 million euros to help 50 thousand families for a period of two years, and Canada, which will allocate support that could reach $ 70 million. This movement made it necessary to “update the database to identify the poorest and broaden the beneficiary base.” But by what criteria will they be determined? In the absence of an updated study of the situation of families, the “standard” is still lacking. Ahmed speaks of the existence of a questionnaire, “The classification begins in the category of extreme poverty with those who obtain the lowest grade, until reaching the statistic of 23%”.
International organizations, such as the World Bank and the World Food Program, were not enthusiastic about conducting a population survey, before approving the assigned World Bank loan, contrary to the position of the European Union, which encouraged the data collection process. Ahmed explains that the importance of data is not limited to the distribution of money, “it is fundamental because it helps us reduce school dropouts, follow up on children and the elderly, know who needs special treatment after the subsidy is lifted. and work to lift people out of poverty and employ them … “
In two months, “we will finish cleaning the database of the poorest program, and then we will decide the applications submitted, which are about 240 thousand, and June 2021 is ready to finish the job.” The problem, according to Ahmed, “is that we only have 500 volunteers in the affairs centers working on the ground, and we have to increase the number to 2000, so we will go to the administration of the Lebanese University for Cooperation.”
50 million euros from the European Union to help 50 thousand families
It will take him six months to work on the project, which is a very long period, given the catastrophic situation in the country, the collapse of family budgets and the absence of any government aid program. Crises require the formation of emergency cells to reduce the negative effects. On the other side of the planet, Bolivia suffered a US coup d’état that caused security incidents and a serious economic crisis. Before the left-wing opposition returned to power, it had crafted its rescue plan to support the poorest families. A week after the inauguration of the new president, Luchou Arce, 4 million Bolivians will benefit from the aid to face hunger.
[ad_2]
