Experts are call­ing on Bangladesh to improve social secu­rity for the quickly grow­ing elderly pop­u­la­tion in the coun­try. From IRIN we take a look at the prob­lem for the coun­try that has 6 per­cent of it’s pop­u­la­tion at the age 60 or older.

With a grow­ing num­ber of older peo­ple and a large impov­er­ished pop­u­la­tion, Bangladesh needs to improve social secu­rity sup­port for the country’s most vul­ner­a­ble groups, experts say.

Over 6 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion or 7.2 mil­lion peo­ple are aged 60 or over, accord­ing to the last cen­sus in 2001.

About 80,000 peo­ple are added to this older pop­u­la­tion every year, which is pro­jected to be over 17 mil­lion peo­ple by 2025, grow­ing at a rate faster than that of Europe’s, accord­ing to gov­ern­ment officials.

How­ever, most of these older peo­ple and many of the poor in the coun­try — about 50 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion lives on less than US$1 a day, accord­ing to the UN — are not cov­ered by any form of social security.

Mean­while, exist­ing social secu­rity mea­sures are unable to meet the needs of vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple, and the scope of these pro­grammes urgently needs to be widened, say experts.
Bangladesh is exposed to nat­ural dis­as­ters, extreme weather events and other shocks, leav­ing the poor­est with­out any form of pro­tec­tion, said Wahidud­din Mah­mud, a mem­ber of the UN Com­mit­tee for Devel­op­ment Pol­icy (UNCDP), a sub­sidiary body of the UN Eco­nomic and Social Coun­cil (ECOSOC).

“The vul­ner­a­ble con­di­tion of Bangladesh may force peo­ple who are now barely above the poverty line into the depths of poverty any moment,” Wahidud­din told a recent NGO-organized sem­i­nar in Dhaka on extreme poverty alleviation.

“To ensure sus­tain­able social secu­rity for the poor, the efforts of the local gov­ern­ment units must be sup­ple­mented by a strong frame­work of gov­ern­ment eco­nomic reg­u­la­tions,” he said.

Weak capac­ity

About 1.2 mil­lion peo­ple are employed by the gov­ern­ment and are eli­gi­ble for pen­sions after they retire at age 57, but most of the country’s labour force, which is rural, does not receive a pension.

Another 1.7 mil­lion peo­ple over 65 who are unable to work or do not have fam­ily sup­port receive allowances through a pro­gramme intro­duced by the Min­istry of Social Welfare.

How­ever, few other safety nets exist, and offi­cials and experts say that pro­vid­ing social secu­rity ben­e­fits to assure food, lodg­ing and health care facil­i­ties for the impov­er­ished should become the country’s top priority.

Min­is­ter of Food and Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Muham­mad Abdur Raz­zaque said cur­rent social secu­rity and wel­fare pro­grammes were unable to cover more than 50 per­cent of the extremely impov­er­ished in the country.

Almost 25 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion of Bangladesh falls within this cat­e­gory, he told the poverty sem­i­nar, held in Dhaka last month.

Allowances, food stamps and food rations, sub­si­dies for basic goods, pub­lic pro­grammes which pro­vide liveli­hoods and income for the poor, and fee waivers for ser­vices such as health­care are iden­ti­fied by experts as exam­ples of needed social secu­rity nets.

VGF and VGD

The gov­ern­ment runs two major pro­grammes for sup­port­ing vul­ner­a­ble populations.

The Vul­ner­a­ble Group Feed­ing (VGF) pro­gramme pro­vides food to low income and other vul­ner­a­ble groups who can­not meet basic needs for sur­vival due to nat­ural dis­as­ters or socio-economic cir­cum­stances, such as age, ill­ness or disease.

The Vul­ner­a­ble Group Devel­op­ment (VGD) pro­gramme, on the other hand, exclu­sively enables the poor­est rural women and their fam­ily mem­bers to over­come food inse­cu­rity and their low social and eco­nomic status.

VGD includes sus­tained, longer-term activ­i­ties such as risk man­age­ment for nat­ural dis­as­ters, HIV/AIDS pre­ven­tion, mater­nal and child health and liveli­hood skills.

Offi­cials acknowl­edge the gov­ern­ment should focus its efforts more on longer-term devel­op­ment pro­grammes, rather than short-term relief efforts.

“Over time, the relief pro­grammes such as VGF, should move towards becom­ing sus­tain­able devel­op­ment pro­grammes like VGD,” Naser Farid, pol­icy research direc­tor of the Food Plan­ning and Mon­i­tor­ing Unit (FPMU) of the Min­istry of Food, told IRIN.
“About two-thirds of food assis­tance pro­grammes are now financed by the gov­ern­ment. In the mid 1990s, this used to be only 40 per­cent,” he said.

Hus­sain Zil­lur Rah­man, a for­mer gov­ern­ment adviser, said there was a dis­par­ity in spend­ing on dif­fer­ent poverty alle­vi­a­tion programmes.

“Cur­rently the gov­ern­ment spends more than five times more money on feed­ing vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple than it invests on pro­grammes that help the hard­core poor to earn their own liv­ing,” he told the poverty seminar.

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