Three of the beneficiaries of the Liberian Social Cash Transfer Program including, 19-year-old Hawa, mother of two children, seated in the middle |
Her life was shattered—hopeless and preoccupied with an unbearable burden. However, today, everything has changed for the better after she became one of the beneficiaries of the social cash transfer program.
As she gave her testimony, tears set in my eyes, but I
managed to control it. I saw many people in the hall, like me, rocking
their heads front and back, left and right, unquestionably in
compassion.
It wasn’t a day dream or phantasm. It was neither a
funeral discourse nor a thriller movie, but the moment caught everyone’s
attention. Everyone!
”I was just 14 years old when I got my first
child…and I now have two children and my small sister living with me,”
the 19-year old divulged to the disbelief of her audience in the
Tubmanburg Administrative Building—the capital of Bomi County.
Many of us who initially saw Hawa took her as a
little girl (a child) who may have escorted her aged father or mother to
the program we were attending—a three-day regional consultation for the
establishment of a social protection strategy and policy for Liberia.
”My mother and my father died in the war and the man
who born by me went to gold mine [neighboring Gbarpolu County] and he
never came back…, she went on, appearing as if she wanted to sob,
exhibiting the childishness in her “maturity”. “But I thank God for the
Social Cash Transfer (SCT) program that has changed my life and put my
three children (one of them being her junior sister of 6) in school,”
the stunt-looking Hawa stated.
Indeed, Hawa is just one of 1,900 families
benefitting from the pilot SCT program taking place in Bomi, the
country’s poorest county.
Up till now (over one month ago) I still do not
believe that Hawa, as little and as young as she appears, is a mother of
two children. But that’s the uncooked fact, and who am I to question
the unquestionable!
Under normal conditions, people of Hawa’s age and
size should be in school learning to prepare themselves for the
future—to complete high school and/or college education, get a job and
marry (the biggest dream of any young woman) and take care of her
family. Unfortunately, however, she has become an illiterate mother of
three children, even before she attained universal womanhood age of 18.
In a country where about 68% of the population is
poor, and worse of all, living in the country’s poorest county, it
didn’t require a Harvard graduate to declare that Hawa needed all the
help in the world to enable her cater for herself and her three
children—if they must survive, if they must go to school, if they must
grow up to become responsible citizens, if they must live dignified
lives.
No wonder she remains all grateful to the social cash transfer
program which she described as her mother and father and by extension
her savior, which delivered her from the depth of the ocean of poverty.
”There was no support for us; no ma (mother), no pa
(father), but I thank God for the social cash transfer people,” she
stated Monday, March 5, 2012 in Tubmanburg when she, along with three
other beneficiaries, gave testimony of how the program has transformed
their lives.
SCT and the Success
The SCT pilot scheme was launched in 2010 to protect
children living in poor and vulnerable households. Bomi County,
organizers said, was selected to pilot the program because of its
exceptionally high level of food insecurity. Bomi has one of the lowest
levels of food consumption in the country.
Fourteen years (1989-2003) of off-and-on civil
conflict left the country’s infrastructure and economy in total
shambles. Despite recent successive years of economic growth, levels of
poverty remain high with about 84% of the population living on less than
$1.25 per day some studies have found.
It is estimated that out of the 48% of the Liberian
population below the extreme poverty line, 50,000 households are
extremely disadvantaged, labour-constrained (unable to work) and highly
food insecure. Hawa finds herself here.
As a form of social protection the SCT pilot scheme
was initiated by the Government of Liberia to protect these children and
families (of Hawa category) from food insecurity and the general
deprivation caused by extreme poverty and household composition.
Supported by UNICEF with financial grants from the
European Union and the Government of Japan, the scheme is being piloted
in Bomi County because of its exceptionally high level of food
insecurity, as identified in the 2006 Comprehensive Food Security and
Nutrition Survey.
Beneficiary households receive monthly cash
transfers that vary according to the size of the household, with
additional sums provided for each child enrolled in school. While the
transfer is not conditioned on school enrolment, the program is intended
to provide an incentive for education, discourage child labour and
provide caregivers with additional resources for school-related costs
such as clothing, exercise books and pencils.
As of March 2012, 1,900 families in Bomi were
receiving support through this program, and their lives will never slip
back into the dens of poverty from which they have been lifted.
Households of four or more people receive roughly LD$1,750
(approximately US$25) per month. An estimated 54 per cent of
beneficiaries are children.
Like Hawa, several other beneficiaries testified
that the program was indeed a life-changing endeavor and called on the
government and partners to keep it up.
More testimonies
Like the case of Hawa, Nancy Johnson, beautifully
attired in African wrapper (lappa) was overwhelmed when she took the
stage to testify. A mother of six fatherless children, Nancy explained
that she believes that her life and those of her kids will never be the
same as beneficiaries of the SCT program. “I just want to thank God and
the social cash transfer people for turning my life around,” the
middle-aged woman noted. “Life was too tough for me and my children; we
used to wash people’s clothes before we get two cups of rice to eat”.
Nancy now looks healthy. All of her children (4 boys,
2 girls) are in school like others in the community. She no longer
lives in a shanty shelter. She has built a better house and a small
table before it to sell wares (basically foodstuff). She is no longer a
laughing stock among her colleagues; she has considerable amount of
clothes for the family and she, too, can now fix her hair. “You see the
way I look healthy, I was not like this before,” she divulged. “I and my
children had just one set of clothes, but the social cash transfer has
changed our lives.”
Zwannah Morris, a diabetic, said the SCT, like his
other beneficiaries, turned the hopeless direction of his life to a
positive one. Now he sends his two motherless children (wife deceased)
to a Catholic school and feed them with the monthly SCT assistance. Most
importantly, he saves some of the money to add to what he gets from
other sources to buy his drugs.
“I got sick and everybody abandoned me. Because of
the sickness (diabetes) I don’t have the strength to work to earn a
living,” he continued. “Life was tough for me and I became a beggar…but I
am no more a beggar after the social cash came to rescued me.”
From one pair of trousers, Zwannah now has a dozen.
By saving portion of his monthly SCT allowance, he generated funds to
start construction of a house for himself. A politician saw the
unfinished structure and decided to complete it for use as his
(politician) campaign office in last year’s election. Following the
election, he explained, the politician turned over his new house and he
now boasts of a new home. “I give all the praise to God and the social
cash transfer program; it is really helping us the poor and weak
people,” he claimed.
Right opposite the Klay Check Point (Bomi) lives
another beneficiary of the SCT, Zoe Davies. Mothered to nine children
and husbandless, Zoe, appearing to be in her mid 40s, had lived in a
single room with all her belonging and seven of her nine children until
the SCT team met her.
She is now reconstructing and expanding her house
with three of the kids in school for the first time. “I just thank God
for this program,” she said excitedly. “My children were never going to
‘know book’ [get educated] just like me, but three of them going to
school now and I am saving money for the other ones to go next year.”
“I have joined a club and when I get that money I
will start selling cold board (cook rice) at the [Klay] check point and
the money from there will take good care of me and my children and make
my house look better,” she told this writer at the house which was being
expanded by three men. She said though the money given her was not
sufficient, she was investing it into good venture, and in coming
months, those contributing the SCT would be proud of how they have
turned her life around.
The testimonies of these beneficiaries are indeed
overwhelmed with success stories of the SCT program and suggest that
government and its partners can do more, through a well coordinated
social protection policy, as being done in several countries around the
world including 26 in Africa, to restore dignity to some 50,000 ultra
poor Liberians across the country.
The Need For SP Policy In Liberia
Social Protection, according to the World Bank, is
“public interventions meant to assist individuals, households and
communities in better managing income risks.” Through this assistance,
Social Protection aims to contribute to poverty reduction and equitable,
sustainable growth, specifically focusing on (i) protection to assure
adequate support for the poor; (ii) prevention to provide security to
the vulnerable people; and (iii) promotion to increase the chances for
greater productivity and higher incomes.
Liberia has no cohesive social protection policy in
place. There’s greater need for one. Various groups and organizations
including government and donors work on fragmented programs in the
sector, with little or no impact, according to research.
According to a study commissioned by the United
Nations in December 2008 on Social Protection Issues in Liberia, out of
the country’s nearly 3.5 million population, 300,000 households (48% of
the population) live in extreme poverty. Members of these households are
not able to meet their most basic needs in terms of food, shelter,
clothing, basic health care and education.
This, the study found, is partly due to income
poverty and partly due to a lack of social services such as basic health
care and education. Neither the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) nor most other policy or
planning documents contain interventions that are specifically tailored
to increase the income of extremely poor households.
Of the 300,000 extremely poor households,
approximately 50,000 households (8% of all households) are at the same
time labour constrained. “They are households with no adult members that
are fit for productive work. They consist of people who are too old or
too young to work or disabled or chronically sick,” the report of the
study noted, adding, “As they are labour constrained they are not able
to access the labour based interventions planned in the PRS. They are
the worst off and at the same time the most neglected category of
households in Liberia.”
These are the people that the social protection
policy will benefit.
That’s why as the country prepares to become a middle
income state by 2030, relevant government ministries (Planning, Health
and Gender), along with international partners, have seen the need to
establish a national social protection strategy.
Quite frankly, without social protection of the
poorest categories of the population, the peace building efforts and the
efforts to build an inclusive society based on justice and the
protection and provision of human rights cannot succeed and the MDGs
will not be achieved. Even economic growth will not be sustainable if a
substantial part of the children of Liberia grow up under conditions
that deny them the right to food, to basic health care and to education.
Social protection is an investment in human capital
which ensures that all children have the opportunity to become healthy,
well educated and productive members of the society.
Like other West African countries, Liberia has a
large number of extremely poor and vulnerable households. This is partly
due to income disparities, which existed already before the war, and is
partly the result of many years of armed conflict.
The study found that in addition to income poverty,
which is reflected in the high number of absolutely poor and extremely
poor households, the country also suffers from scarcity of social
services (education, health, water and sanitation) and from the
inadequacy of physical infrastructure (especially roads), of economic
infrastructure (financial services like rural banks) and of
administrative and security related infrastructure.
Most affected by all these deficits are vulnerable
groups like children, women, the elderly and people living with
disabilities and living with HIV and AIDS. In addition there are large
groups of people who suffer from specific problems resulting from the
war: Internally displaced people, people who fled to neighboring
countries and are repatriated, combatants who have been demobilized and
have to be reintegrated.
There are also orphans many of whom are living in
sub-standard orphanages, former child soldiers and women and girls, who
have been abducted, used as slaves and exposed to sexual violence by the
different armies and rebel groups, the study outlined.
The long list of social protection needs given above
shows that income poverty is only one of the problems faced by a large
number of Liberians. However, income in cash and/or kind is the
precondition for meeting basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter,
basic health services, sanitation and education. Lack of income results
in reduced access to basic needs.
With this in mind, it is unquestionable that Liberia
needs a consistent social protection policy and program which will guide
the process of designing, testing and eventually implementing social
protection interventions.
The social protection policy has to complement the
PRS and other policies of government.
It will have to be elaborated in a
joint effort led by the Government and supported by civil society and
development partners.
Meanwhile, though Hawa has not finally jumped out of
the rivers of poverty, to a greater extent, the SCT program has brought
her significant relief and close to the shores of dignity. She can now
try her best, in addition to the monthly cash assistance from the
program, to swim out of the river and climb the ladder out of the
dungeon of poverty. This could help her live a dignified life like
others in her community.
By D. Kaihenneh Sengbeh/dakasen1978@yahoo.com/ +231886 586 531
Posted on May 1, 2012 on African Brother and Comrade Sengbeh's Weblog
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