DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN-SRI LANKA: Political Patronage Keeps Poor Out

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, May 16 1998 (IPS) - Sri Lanka’s social welfare programmes benefit nearly half of the island’s population, but there is growing evidence that its recipients are not just the poorest of the poor.

Even those who are “not so poor” live off pro-poor development initiatives, since government’s think only of keeping their vote bank happy, unconcerned about the steadily shrinking welfare budget.

As a result, Sri Lanka’s many social welfare programmes have had little impact in countering urban and rural poverty, for which independent experts say the lack of a comprehensive pro- poor poverty reduction policy is to be blamed.

“This has on occasions resulted in conflict of policies, inefficient resource allocation and even duplication of efforts,” the Colombo office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said in a note.

The UNDP and World Bank are jointly assisting the government by undertaking a full assessment of past and present welfare programmes, to evaluate the impact and usefulness of social welfare allocations.

Based on their findings, the Colombo government said it will identify the “real poor” in the country and ensure that future government poverty eradication programmes will benefit only them.

“There are various ways of measuring poverty like income levels or through the intake of calories per individual but one of the components of this study is to devise the best measurement of poverty so that poverty programmes reach properly targeted groups,” a UNDP official said.

Sri Lanka has made substantial gains in reducing poverty, since independence from British colonial rule in 1948 by investing in the social sector, which has paid rich dividends. This island nation is on par with some countries in the industrialised north in the UNDP’s human development index.

But poverty has remained a problem, and poverty alleviation schemes like former president Ranasinghe Premadasa’s much- publicised ‘Janasaviya’, have been successful only to a point.

Even the present government’s ‘Samurdhi’ programme is riddled with problems that have affected its working in some areas. The programme for the rural poor provides for direct monthly cash transfers, ranging from 100 rupees (1.5 dollars) for a single individual to 1,000 rupees for a family of five members, and for loans for poor villagers.

Until 1997, some 1.5 million households had been covered by the programme, exceeding the original target of 1.2 million, the Central Bank said in its annual report.

The scheme for rural development is implemented by 36,000 mobilisers (high school graduates hired for this purpose) who screen beneficiaries at the village level. Each mobiliser is paid 2,000 rupees per month.