CREATING A SOCIAL WELFARE SCHEME TO PROTECT THE DESTITUTE IN ZAMBIA

WHY SOCIAL PROTECTION?

In Zambia, approximately 200,000 households are destitute (10%), 100,000 are moderately poor and incapacitated (5%), 400,000 households are critically poor but viable (20%), 300,000 households are moderately poor but viable (15%) and 1,000,000 households are non-poor (50%). Social protection can be understood as the various public and private initiatives that seek to help households: (i) prevent experiencing vulnerability or poverty, (ii) respond to a situation of temporary or moderate vulnerability or poverty, or (iii) cope with extreme or chronic vulnerability or poverty.

THE POOR ARE NOT IRRESPONSIBLE

GTZ is currently assisting the Social Safety Net Project of the MCDSS to implement a pilot Social Cash Transfer Scheme in Kalomo District.  The scheme provides regular, monthly cash transfers of K30,000 or K40,000 to the neediest 10% of households within 39 various communities (143 villages) in the district. 

The purpose of the programme is to reduce extreme poverty, hunger and starvation in the 10% most critically poor (i.e., chronic hunger, under nutrition, begging, or danger of starvation) and incapacitated (no able-bodied person to work, bread-winners are young, sick, elderly, or dead, high dependency-ratio, etc.) households out of a pilot area of 11,349 households. 

In other words, the scheme is especially targeted towards the approximately 200,000 destitute households across Zambia.  As a pilot project, the scheme also seeks to prove that unconditional cash transfers are an effective and affordable method of providing social protection to vulnerable groups. The scheme is administered by the MCDSS through its existing nation-wide PWAS structure, which includes Community Welfare Assistance Committees (CWACs) at grassroots level and Area Coordinating Committees (ACCs) and District Welfare Assistance Committees (DWACs) at higher levels. 

At community level, the CWACs undergo lengthy consultations within a community and with local headpersons, to identify and rank the 10% neediest households in the area.  Through their targeting efforts, 84% of recipient households are headed by older persons or women, 50% of households are affected by HIV/AIDS and 60% of recipients in households are children. 

Once households are put on the scheme, cash can either be drawn through personal bank-accounts for those recipients living nearby to town, or collected on a monthly basis from designated pay-points at schools, post-offices, etc.  Administrative costs account for 17% of the total cost of the programme. 

Regularly monitored since its inception in May 2004, the scheme has contributed to many positive benefits in the community, including a reduction in school absenteeism, a decline in deaths, improvement of household nutrition, decrease in community begging and increase in cash-flow within local shops. 

Furthermore, the monitoring reports have discovered that the cash is almost always well spent.  Overall, 68% of transfers have been spent on consumption (e.g., food, clothing, education & health), 25% on investments (e.g., chickens, goats and seeds) and 7% on savings. 

Some of the advantages of cash transfers as opposed to other social protection initiatives include: cash remains in the local community, inequality (income-gap) is reduced at local level, people are given the dignity to choose how to use the money, cash transfers are less costly to administer than food-aid, etc.   

Some of the main challenges in administering the cash transfer scheme include: K30,000 or K40,000 per month is too little for most households to fully cope with their destitution, there is need for a scaling-up of social services and programmes (i.e., education, healthcare, nutrition, vaccinations, counselling, training, road-development, etc.) to compliment the cash transfer, the distance to some pay points is too excessive for elderly and disabled recipients, and that it is unclear whether voluntary administration of the programme by the CWACs is sustainable in the long-term.

THE PUBLIC WELFARE ASSISTANCE SCHEME

The Public Welfare Assistance Scheme (PWAS) of the MCDSS is similar in many regards to the Kalomo Cash Transfer Scheme, though it does not directly distribute cash to recipient households.  PWAS interventions provide non-cash benefits such as food, shelter, clothing, school uniforms, schoolbooks, school fees or health fees.  Similar to the cash transfer scheme, the object of the PWAS is to alleviate the suffering of the vulnerable and distressed and improve their quality of life to a basic standard. 

The PWAS targets nearly the same type of vulnerable persons in Zambia, namely persons who are aged, disabled or chronically ill, single-headed households, orphans and vulnerable children, displaced or victims of minor disasters and others genuinely unable to assist themselves. 

However, the PWAS targets only the 2% most vulnerable members of the population (200,000 applicants), a target seemingly not linked to nation-wide need.  The 2003 National Housing Survey by the MCDSS measured destitute households needing welfare assistance at approximately 10% and destitute persons at approximately 7%.   

Unfortunately, the PWAS has failed in its objective to provide regular assistance to the 2% of the population who belong to the scheme.  Due to erratic funding, the 200,000 beneficiaries only receive some form of benefit one or two times per year. 

For 2006, the PWAS was allocated approximately 10.6 Billion Kwacha to cover the 200,000 recipients across all 72 districts, which affords only about K50,000 per household for the entire year.  The Kalomo cash transfer scheme demonstrates the potential effectiveness of predictable, well-administered, well-funded basic welfare transfers. 

Depending upon deeper analysis of the pilot project in Kalomo, the MCDSS may consider shifting its assistance from food and other goods to regular transfers of cash. 

Further development of the PWAS to incorporate some of the positive elements of the Kalomo Social Transfer Scheme could provide an effective national safety net within Zambia, though its success depends upon good targeting, honest administration and sustainable funding. 

OBSTACLES TO SOCIAL WELFARE SCHEME

The provision of an up-scaled version of the PWAS, to effectively reach the 200,000 destitute Zambian households, requires particular attention to two main areas: administrative capacity and funding.   

First, looking at the capacity of government to administer an up-scaled Public Welfare Assistance Scheme, the centralised system of budgeting and programme administration jeopardises the ability of the MCDSS to provide adequate and regular benefits to needy recipients.  The National Decentralisation Policy of 2001 serves as a positive guide to decentralising operations in the country, but the policy remains largely un-implemented five years down the road. 

At district level, MCDSS offices need the capacity to assess vulnerability or chronic poverty (working with CSO), to budget according to the number of needy persons in the district, to administer and account for finances, to implement, monitor and evaluate its social protection programmes, etc.  Though the PWAS structure is very grassroots and decentralised, most district offices lack sufficient capacity to administer an up-scaled social welfare scheme.

Second, analysing the resource gap for social protection in Zambia, the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services was allocated 63 Billion Kwacha in 2006.  According to the Fifth National Development Plan (FNDP), the allocation for social protection is budgeted to increase to K75 Billion by the year 2010 (19% increase).  Allocation to the MCDSS is less than 1% of the total 2006 National Budget. 

For comparison purposes, it can be estimated that a nation-wide social transfer scheme to reach 200,000 destitute houses would alone cost about 110 Billion Kwacha, assuming 17% administrative costs and a K40,000 monthly transfer to each household. 

This translates to an approximate annual cost of US$28 million (at an exchange rate of K4,000 to 1US$), which is less than 0.5% of GDP or approximately 1% of the 2006 National Budget. 

From this simple analysis, it can be concluded that the total budget of the MCDSS is insufficient to provide an adequate national social welfare system (based upon the Kalomo model), let alone perform its many other duties. 

Furthermore, it seems unlikely that this situation will change in the next few years.  Looking more closely at the social protection Budget within the FNDP, allocation to “welfare support” is actually budgeted to decline from K12.6 Billion in 2006 to K12 Billion in 2010. Looked at as consumptive expenditure, one could say that the cost of social protection is too expensive. 

On the other hand, looking at Social protection as investment in the Zambian people and the future, 1% of the Zambian National Budget is not too much to spend on basic welfare. According to the 2006  World Development Report from the World Bank, countries of Sub-Saharan African spend on average only 0.25% of GDP for Social assistance (e.g., food aid, cash transfers, work for food, etc.), whereas the 30 member countries of the OECD (including the United States, Japan, Australia, and most European Countries) spend on average 2.5% of GDP towards social assistance.

THE NEED FOR

POLITICAL WILL

Though Social protection is deeply rooted within African culture and tirelessly provided for by African families and communities, African governments of today are the most reluctant in the world to invest in social protection efforts (due in part to IMF/WB conditionalities). 

 

The fundamental obstacle to achieving Social protection in Zambia is political will, the will to build administrative capacity and prioritise expenditure to the most poor.  It is time for all government leaders, especially those key officials within the MoFNP who set the priorities for national spending, to admit the reality of widespread poverty in Zambia and to put the money in initiatives (such as PWAS) that will benefit the most poor and destitute.  For Haatantala (whose story appeared in Part 1 of this article) and many of the other 1,181 households benefiting from the Kalomo Cash Transfer Scheme, K30,000 per month has meant the difference between begging and growing a field of food, shame and dignity, life and death. 

Social protection is not wasteful, consumption-oriented expenditure but a true investment in women and children, in social cohesion, in the future.  Social protection should not be left as a burden to the elderly, extended families, communities, churches, donors, NGOs, etc., but should be championed by each and every government.  Social protection is a universal human right.

Chris Petrauskis

JCTR Staff