Millions of urban and new poor caused by the pandemic remain unaddressed by the government's social protection programmes. At least 41 percent of these people have shifted to lower pay jobs and eight percent are still unemployed, reveals a study conducted by Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) and Brac Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD).

According to the study, earning uncertainty among informal sector workers, most of whom live in the cities, has exacerbated during the pandemic. Moreover, the poor urban residents have been hit hard by 98 percent increase in non-food expenditures such as rent, transportation, healthcare and utilities.

As a result, debt as proportion of annual income has doubled in the last one year and savings have been depleted drastically (11 percent in urban and 24 percent in rural) creating 24.5 million new poor as of March, 2021.

These alarming facts were shared in a webinar titled "COVID Impact and Social Protection Challenges: Urban and the New Poor" organised by PPRC in partnership with BIGD on Thursday night.

According to Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman, executive chairman, PPRC and keynote presenter of the webinar, "The Covid-19 crisis did not trigger any expansion in social protection allocations in the new budget. The social protection responses were mostly financed through re-purposing existing allocations rather than additional new financing."

Asif Saleh, executive director, Brac Bangladesh, said, "The government had announced to support five million poor people through USD 148.81 million unconditional cash transfer. Eventually, they identified around 3.7 million

people and all of them were rural poor."

Explaining the urban-rural social assistance gap, Ugo Gentilini, Global Lead for Social Assistance, The World Bank, said, "Perceptions that there are more jobs and opportunities in the cities, assisting urban poor may trigger rural to urban migration, adapting design of social assistance to urban livelihoods and lack of specific data are some of the major reasons behind urban-rural social assistance gap."

Dr Shamsul Alam, GED (senior secretary), Bangladesh Planning Commission, said, "I think the government policy makers have deliberately and rightly made this decision of delivering most of the assistance to the rural poor because in Bangladesh already there exists visible attraction towards cities among rural population. Prioritising rural poor in social protection programmes will control mass migration towards cities and this will ultimately check the spread of the disease."

Hossain Zillur Rahman pointed out that the evidence on Covid-19 impact calls for major rethinking on poverty alleviation approaches. He identified three new priorities -- urban social protection, addressing the "new poor" and a new policy look at the informal economy.

"55% of Bangladesh GDP comes from service sector and much of this sector is constituted of various informal enterprises. Yet policy attention has systematically been more on the big players and less on the millions of small players,' said Rahman.

The webinar ended with the launching of PPRC-BIGD research publication Livelihoods, Coping and Recovery during Covid-19 Crisisjointly launched by Hossain Zillur Rahman and Imran Matin, executive director, BIGD.