Jeniffer Dube
14 November 2009
THE Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare is in the process of drafting a Social Protection (SP) Strategic Framework to improve on existing social protection schemes whose benefits were last enjoyed a decade ago.
SP is a set of interventions to reduce social and economic risk and vulnerability.
Local SP programmes include the Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM) which provides tuition assistance to Orphans and Vulnerable Children and Cash Transfers which provide free cash assistance to the elderly, chronically ill and disabled persons.
The ministry, together with the donor community under the Zimbabwe Multi-Donor Trust Fund last week held a one-day workshop in Harare to consult stakeholders on gaps that might have to be filled.
Labour Minister Paurina Mpariwa said there was need to adopt policies that will equip the poor with coping mechanisms as gaps in SP provision continue to plunge many into the deep end of poverty despite significant economic improvements that have been recorded in the country.
"Despite positive political and economic changes, there still exist challenges with regard to increasing levels of vulnerability resulting from a web of overlapping factors," Mpariwa said.
"Limited access to cash following adoption of multiple currencies means that more households have been drawn into poverty with limited coping mechanisms."
She said SP remained important despite the decreasing HIV and Aids prevalence rate as the number of children being orphaned continues to grow exponentially.
Mpariwa said the elderly, who care for many orphans, continue to require assistance as their pensions have been eroded by the previously hyper-inflationary environment.
She said equally affected were the disabled whereby only one tenth of them were receiving social assistance.
Also needing help were youths who have been thrown into poverty by the economic crisis of the past decade which rendered them jobless, she said.
"Before the economic crisis Zimbabwe had a well diversified and viable social security system administered by both the public and private sector," she said.
"These systems in terms of design are still intact, however in terms of delivering services they have practically collapsed."
Speakers at the workshop said poor beneficiary selection and targeting was among the major negative factors to infiltrate SP provision.
A report released in May shows that the local situation further deteriorated following the often violent land reform programme, which affected mostly poor households who were rendered unemployed and homeless after the ownership of the farms where they stayed changed.
John Rock, a resource person from Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme, said such SP schemes as crop packs, price subsidy, old age pension, free primary education and public works have failed to alleviate hunger and poverty in many countries.
This, he said, was because of a failure to adhere to requirements that SP schemes should be pro-poor, on budget and predictable.
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