Why is there no database of the poor and vulnerable?

We are concerned that four months since the onset of Covid-19 in the country, the government is yet to prepare a reliable database of the poor and vulnerable, which continues to pose a major challenge for the distribution of food aid to those in need. From the beginning, the government has insisted that the country has sufficient food reserves to ward off any possibility of a famine, but unfortunately it has not been able to ensure a systematic and equitable distribution of these reserves. As such, vast numbers of those worst hit by the pandemic have been left out of social safety net programmes; corruption and mismanagement in distribution of relief have been rampant. Private initiatives have also fallen short of reaching the vulnerable in a systematic manner, given the absence of a database. 

Food secretary, Mosammat Nazmanar Khanum, in a virtual programme organised by the Right to Food Bangladesh, a platform of food security campaigners, admitted that an extensive study is needed to prepare a complete and flawless datecase to ensure food security. She asked the platform to carry out such a study to find out the exact number of vulnerable people. While we appreciate her candour and her willingness to give space to the development sector, we wonder why the government itself is not preparing such a list, given the complexities and difficulties involved in identifying poor households across the country in the absence of a fully-functioning elaborate identification infrastructure. There needs to be coordination between local government and NGOs in this regard to ensure speedy creation of such a database and effective distribution of food aid.

The government is still using the 2016 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES), the last official database for assessing poverty, to roll out social safety net programmes. This needs to be updated on a an urgent basis to reflect the growing and current number of poor and vulnerable households so that effective and targeted initiatives can be undertaken. Otherwise, no matter how extensive the food aid packages are, a large number of poor households will continue to go hungry.