That a move is underway to bring the payments to the beneficiaries of the government's safety net programmes under a biometric identity-enabled payment system is a piece of good news. Allegations are galore that a good part of the funds disbursed under the government's safety net programmes does not reach the target population. It is also alleged that the destinations of funds are changed midway because of irregularities indulged in by a section of unscrupulous people having political connections, in most cases. Local and international organisations have confirmed such diversion of funds, time and again. But the government has not yet taken any concrete step to stop the irregularities though it has expanded the reach of the safety net programmes further, raising its budgetary allocations every year. The total allocation for the safety net programmes in the national budget for the current financial year stands at about Tk 250 billion.
The Digital Financial Services under the Access to Information (A2i) of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has initiated the move of introducing biometric identity-enabled payment system. It, according to a report published in this paper Saturday last, intends to launch a pilot project with the cooperation of the central bank for digital disbursement of government allowances to a limited number of poor widows, distressed women, elderly people and freedom fighters. Under the project, the target population will have access to the payment of allowances being authorised and authenticated by means of National ID and biometric identity at their nearest cash points, bank agents, ATM, bank branches, post offices and digital centres. The electronic payment system would be expanded gradually, depending on the success of the pilot project. In fact, the biometric identity-enabled payment system, if introduced successfully at the grassroots, would open up new opportunities for digitising essential services like land registration, land records and payments of taxes and fees at the local level.
When the government is trying to digitise the disbursement of safety net programme funds, its effort to prepare a clean and genuine database of poor people through a national household survey is facing lots of hurdles due to wrong selection of private consultancy firms. The cost of the project has been doubled with project duration having been extended by two years. Yet the project remains half-done with major weaknesses detected in the survey data. Many poor families in the survey areas have reported their non-inclusion in the database. What is more frustrating is that most people are not aware of the survey when the government had appointed a private firm at a cost of Tk. 200 million to carry out widespread campaign and publicity to motivate the people to take part in the survey. Allegations have that the firm did not do its job properly when another firm had imparted poor quality training to enumerators and other officials of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
Thus, the move on the part of the government to prepare a genuine database of poor people under a project, largely funded by the World Bank, is unlikely to be completed within this calendar year as implementation of the two major components of the project is yet to begin. In the face of strong reservations about the quality of lists of poor and distressed people who receive safety net programme benefits, the government did embark on the job of preparing a clean database. But one can hardly expect success of the move because of wrong selection of consultancy firms, for reasons best known to the relevant government agency. Under the circumstances, the well-intended move of the PMO to make the payments of safety net money to the poor and distressed people fault-free would make hardly any real substance, if its targets turn out to be wrong ones due to faulty selection process.