Photo: Collected
Zahir Uddin Swapan, political adviser to the prime minister, has stressed building an integrated and simple social protection system in which a citizen does not have to go from door to door of multiple government offices to get government services.
In his view, besides identifying citizens’ needs and risks in advance and delivering assistance quickly, transparency must be ensured in the entire process. He said this today, Sunday, at a session titled ‘Beyond the Safety Net’ of the fifth Bay of Bengal Conversation at the Pan Pacific Sonargaon hotel in the capital.
Zahir Uddin Swapan said the responsibility of the state is to identify the areas of citizens’ vulnerability and risk and respond quickly according to need. In this case, emphasis must be placed on delivering the necessary assistance to people through a transparent digital system.
Mentioning that Bangladesh has already passed the first 10 years since adopting the National Social Security Strategy (NSSS), he said the government is trying to formulate a new strategy based on the experience of this period. Work is being done on experiences and various initiatives with development partners including the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in this regard.
He thinks there is also a need to rethink the purpose of social security programmes. In his words, it is not merely a matter of the state distributing kindness or mercy among people; rather, its goal should be to protect people’s human dignity, increase their capacity to cope with crises, ensure productivity and maintain social harmony.
He said that in the next phase of social protection, it is not enough to judge the success of a programme only on the basis of how much money is being spent. Rather, what matters is how effectively that money is reaching people and how much change it can bring to people’s capacity to build a better life by coping with various risks.
He also highlighted the types of risks now facing families. In his view, the risk of various disasters including floods and cyclones is increasing due to the impact of climate change. At the same time, problems such as urban poverty, informal employment, inflation, medical expenses, unemployment and a sudden fall in income are also creating pressure on families.
The prime minister’s political adviser stressed making the social protection system more dynamic and data-driven to tackle these risks. For this, he highlighted the need for a dynamic social registry, a digital payment system and integrated data management.
The Centre for Governance Studies (CGS) has organised the fifth Bay of Bengal Conversation at the Pan Pacific Sonargaon hotel in the capital with the slogan ‘Navigating power, technology and trust in a newly shaped world’. Prime Minister Tarique Rahman delivered the inaugural address of the conference on Saturday (3 October).
Around 200 speakers, 300 delegates and more than 1,000 participants from over a hundred countries have joined this year’s conference organised by CGS. Former heads of state and government, ministers, diplomats, researchers, journalists, businesspeople, security experts, civil society representatives, innovators and young leaders are taking part in it. The three-day international conference is scheduled to end on Monday (5 October).
