Analysts stress relaunch of food rationing for garment workers

The government should restart food rationing for garment workers immediately to help them buy basic essentials at a subsidised rate, said a noted economist yesterday.
Garment workers are comparatively less well-off than the other groups as they get around Tk 3,000 as minimum wage, said Professor MM Akash of Dhaka University.
So, the workers earnestly need food rationing to maintain their livelihood, the professor said at a seminar on "Realisation of Right to Food: Challenges and Opportunities" on the sideline of South Asia Social Forum 2011.
"The current rationing system is confined to the privilege group, such as the non-poor segment of police, army and other law enforcement agencies, rather than the poor people," he said at a discussion at the five-day forum that began on Friday.
The targeted groups are not getting the benefits of the social safety net programmes, as the system has some leakages in the distribution procedure, he added.
According to a World Bank report in 2009, around 41 percent resources of the safety net programmes did not reach to the poor due to corruption and pilferage, he said.
The economist said the country's constitution describes availability of food as a right. "But it has implications only in words. It is time to give the right for food a legal framework."
He stressed the need for preparing a national database to reduce corruption and overlapping problems of the safety net operations.
Presenting the keynote paper, researcher and development activist Monower Mustafa said food has become a tradable commodity. "Some multinational companies now control the commodity market."
"We should see food from the humanitarian perspective rather than considering it as a tradable commodity," he added.
Fifteen government agencies are now implementing around 48 types of social safety net programmes in the country, he said, adding that lack of coordination is the main obstacle to implement the programmes properly.