A total 17,956 fraudulent Mobile Financial Service (MFS) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) accounts have been cancelled as per the recommendation of a Finance Ministry report when the ministries and divisions concerned have been claiming that the work on enlisting of deserving people fresh has been done in a transparent manner.
However, the government has been able to provide this facility to less than 35 lakh families even though it was supposed to pay Tk 2500 to 50 lakh affected families under this programme.
About 15 lakh fraudulent transactions have been cancelled due to possible of massive irregularities and corruption in the cash assistance for Covid -19 affected people.
The inactive and suspended Mobile Financial Service and EFT accounts have been cancelled as Tk 4.51,59,340 crore undisbursed money returned to the government exchequer.
The report says the government distributed cash support of Tk 879.58 crore among 34,97,353 poor beneficiaries because of the coronavirus pandemic after preparing a database through multi-layer scrutiny of the people who needed it most.
This means more than 70 per cent of the 49,30,154 poor families suffering from the economic fallout of the coronavirus outbreak in Bangladesh received Tk 2,500 each, according to a finance division observation report on 23 September signed by Finance Division Deputy Secretary Asauduzzaman Khan.
After the government imposed countrywide shutdown on March 8 so that the spread of the rogue pathogen can be stymied.
Loss of jobs of millions prompted the government to allocate Tk 1,250 crore for the 50 lakh poor families whose main earning sources were rendered unemployed.
According to the report, PMO provided cash support to six categories - day labourers, agriculture farmers, labourers, housemaid, transport workers, and other victims like van-pullers, construction workers, shop assistants, people employed in small businesses, poulterers supposed to be the targeted beneficiaries.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the government-to-person fund disbursement on May 14.
But the government faced a real challenge when it came to disbursing the money among the genuine beneficiaries as it did not have a comprehensive database.
Utter mismanagement of the country’s safety net schemes, usually marred by weak targeting and corruptions, again surfaced at a time when the poor have been facing possibly the worst crisis in their living.
The ICT division compiled a list of potential beneficiaries from across the country using inputs from the field administrations and scrutinised them through the central aid management software. It sent a list of 49,30,154 people to the Finance Division in three phases.
The Finance Division cross-checked it against the databases of the National Identification (NID) card of the Election Commission, the Department of National Savings, the post office, the Social Safety Net Programmes (SSNPs), pensioners and public sector employees.
It also took the help of the National Telecommunication Monitoring Cell and the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.
Earlier, the Finance Division dropped the names of the 14,32,801 beneficiaries the list for flaws.
The government also paid Tk 5.24 crore for mobile money transfer companies Nagad, bKash, Rocket and SureCash for their 0.06 percent commission.
When the initiative was rolled out, mobile financial services Nagad, bKash, Rocket and SureCash were each given the responsibility to transfer the funds to 17 lakh, 15 lakh, 10 lakh and 8 lakh account-holders respectively.
Nagad distributed Tk 324.47 crore among 12.9 lakh beneficiaries. bKash channelled Tk 233.99 crore among 9.3 lakh beneficiaries, Rocket Tk 177.44 crore among 7.05 lakh recipients and SureCash Tk 120.79 crore among 4.8 lakh beneficiaries. Banks wired Tk 22.88 crore among 90,980 beneficiaries. Of the beneficiaries, 26,38,899 were male and 8,58,454 females.
The database was prepared under the finance ministry's project on strengthening public finance management to enable service delivery. The PMO directly supervised the whole work.
The beneficiaries comprise mostly new poor and they don't receive any support from the existing SSNPs.
Of the beneficiaries, 26,38,899 were male and 8,58,454 females.
The age bracket of 31 to 40 years was the largest beneficiary segment at 33 percent.
Some 13.64 percent of the beneficiaries were less than 30 years of age and those in the age bracket of 41 to 50 years made up 26.44 percent of the beneficiaries.
Those aged 51 to 60 years were 16.68 percent of the recipients and those aged 61 to 70 accounted for 7.34 percent of the beneficiaries.
Masroor Chowdhury, bKash's Head of Government Project and Business Sales, told The Business Post that "We didn't have much work here." We just gave the list. The transaction was done through Bangladesh Bank.
He said he did not know the exact number of transactions cancelled. The number may be much lower.
Masroor said that if a bKash account is not closed by the customer automatically, it should not be closed or suspended.
Abdur Rahman Sikder, deputy managing director of Rocket, made a similar comment.
Meanwhile, Director General of the Disaster Management Directorate Md. Atiqul Haque said, “I can't say this without seeing the whole thing because this programme is in progress before I was posted here.” However, the number of those who have received benefits as real beneficiaries is 35 lakh people he said.
The government has not decided yet whether it would go for distributing the cash support among the rest of the targeted people, said a finance ministry official.
The new database gave the government a basis to come up with a comprehensive list of beneficiaries.
Former Economist of the International Monetary Fund Dr Reza Kibria has said it has to be looked into whether those who need it the most received the support.
A board under the PMO should be formed to manage the database and update it regularly so that it could be used in the future if required, he said.
The board would manage the country's SSNP, said the said.
Reza also said the government will make a system to collect data from the grassroots because it is alleged the politicians did all corruption.
The recent nationwide closure of all economic activities has doubled extreme poverty in Bangladesh, raising the number of the ultra-poor from 10.5 percent of the population to 20.5 percent as of June, the planning commission said.
As a result, the incidence of poverty increased from 20.5 percent to 29.4 percent as a considerable number of people lost their income due to the coronavirus fallout.
Due to the income shock emanating from the pandemic, 77.2 percent of the vulnerable non-poor fell below the poverty line, according to a study of the Power and Participation Research Centre and the Brac Institute for Governance and Development.
About 13 percent of the people have become unemployed in the country due to the pandemic, a survey of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies showed.
As per findings, 19.23 percent of participants with income less than Tk 5,000 reported that their income was reduced to a great extent.
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