POVERTY, INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION There is no clearly articulated social protection framework in Pakistan. Various social security schemes and cash assistance programmes are developed largely as a series of ad-hoc responses to problems raised by particular circumstances or recommended by international donor agencies. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has developed a Social Protection Index (SPI) for Asian countries on which Pakistan stands at the penultimate position with a value of 0.07, just above Papua New Guinea. The estimates of the coverage of public transfers and the extent of private philanthropy reveal that only 1.2 percent households are receiving social assistance from public and private sources. Although the rural share is relatively large (0.4 urban and 1.6 rural), a minute percentage reveals extremely trivial access of poor households to the social assistance intervention. All existing social security schemes are in the formal sector of the economy and designed for the employed labour force and retirees. These schemes generally provide benefits regarding contingencies of sickness, invalidity, maternity, old age, and work related injury. A major shortcoming of these schemes is that a sizable majority of workers remain uncovered through these programmes. The uncovered segment include workers from the agriculture sector, from the informal sector, and those in the formal sector who are either employed temporarily through contractors or working in establishments with less than ten workers. The agriculture sector which constitutes about 61 percent of the labour force, is not only excluded from the social security net, but is virtually exempt from existing laws pertaining to the protection of workers in terms of working conditions, conditions of employment,health, and safety at workplace. Thus the rural poor who comprise the majority of the poor population are not entitled to protection against various risks through social security instruments. The phenomenon clearly indicates a serious flaw in the design of social security schemes and necessitates developing special schemes for the rural poor like social insurance, old age benefits and agriculture insurance along with risk management and disaster risk reduction measures. spdc.org.pk/Publication_detail.aspx?sysID=762 (4 photos)
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 15:35:22 +0000
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