Govt plans overlooked livelihood of the poor

The government's development plans largely exclude initiatives to safeguard the life and livelihood of the common people amid crises sich as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, speakers observed at a webinar yesterday.

Speaking at the webinar titled "Corona's Impact on Life and Nature and Future Development Plan", they also said the development plans only focus on economic growth and ignore measures to tackle the pandemic's negative impact on the life and livelihood of the poor and marginalised.

Life and Nature Safeguard Platform (LNSP) organised the webinar.

Addressing the webinar, Hossain Zillur Rahman, executive chairman of Power and Participation Research Centre, said the government should have rolled out a "smart" restriction plan to contain Covid-19 spread in a way that protects people's life and livelihood at the same time.

However, the initiatives taken do not reflect this approach, Zillur Rahman said.

He also said the urban poor have been affected harshly by the pandemic's first wave last year, and they are likely to face the crunch again during the second wave.

However, their needs have not been addressed as per expectation, he added. The government stimulus packages announced to fight the pandemic's economic fallout and help farmers and informal sector workers is lacking in implementation, he said.

Noted economist Prof Anu Muhammad said although the government, World Bank, and development consultants show satisfaction regarding poverty alleviation in Bangladesh, thorough analysis would reveal large segments of the population locked in at the "marginal" stage of economic safety.

He said before the pandemic, many were already in economically vulnerable situations, with more than five crore people in the informal sectors without any job security.

As a result, the number of people economically affected by the pandemic is much higher than the number of people infected by Covid-19, he added.

He said if the government was responsive and was connected to the mass sentiment, then significant reform initiatives could have been undertaken in the development agenda from the lessons of the first lockdown.

Major points of the reform could have been full rationing, universal healthcare system, and re-thinking ecologically devastating development projects such as the Ruppur nuclear power plant and Rampal coal-based power plant, he added.

Syeda Rizwana Hasan, chief executive of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers' Association, said if the country really wants to be climate-friendly, it needs to come out of the development agenda that exploits nature.

LNSP Coordinator Jyotirmoy Barua moderated the webinar.