Maravi

(HERALD) Bacossi scheme must benefit eligible people

Bacossi scheme must benefit eligible people

THE distribution of Bacossi hampers in Harare and other major urban centres was seen as difficult from the beginning, since there is no equivalent of the close knit geographical communities with their hierarchy of traditional and elected leaders that works so well in rural areas. The main problems are to identify all who are eligible, ensure that all these people are registered, ensure that the ineligible are not registered and to ensure that everyone gets their fair share but that there is no duplication, no ghost recipients and generally no dishonesty.

What those responsible have done is to start a house-to-house registration exercise, which is better than nothing but is unlikely to be inclusive. It probably will prevent "ghost" recipients, duplicated recipients and other horrors, but is unlikely to include all who might be eligible.

What is needed is first a clear list of criteria of who is eligible and who is not. This has never, to our knowledge, been made public.

The house-to-house registration is fine, so far as it goes, but what happens if someone is out the day the registrars turn up, or if a lodger ensures that he can take the lot.

One of the high-priority groups are the old and infirm. Many of these live in low density suburbs. They might own property but thanks to the erosion or destruction of pensions by inflation many have little or no income and are living on handouts from their families.

We believe that in addition to the agents going house-to-house, or even instead of this exercise, there should be a desk at every municipal area office where people can apply to register.

There will, obviously, have to be some sort of simple check to avoid duplicate registrations. But if those responsible for the hampers start with the municipal rate rolls they will have a complete list of every single legal dwelling in Harare, or any other municipality.

Listing family heads with their national identity numbers will give, with the stand number, an easy way to check that there is, for most dwellings, just one hamper per dwelling, with no fictitious addresses, with no people living in two houses and with no one left out. Just putting all on a simple spread sheet will be adequate to run such checks, using data sort keys to find duplicate stand numbers and duplicate ID numbers.

Lodger families are an obvious complication, but they can be included in the system as a supplementary list. Again it will be simple to check the two lists to ensure that there are no duplicate ID numbers.

A lot of residents of old age homes, and pensioners struggling, can be identified by visiting the homes and by using the lists prepared by the municipality when it was considering offering reduced rents to people well over retirement age.

There is no need for the Bacossi distributors to start from scratch, a long process. There are many records already in existence, including rate and voters rolls. The door-to-door registration can be used as a check and as an audit.

To be fair the Bacossi hamper scheme must not only exclude the ineligible and the dishonest, which the door-to-door registration possible does well, but also include all who are eligible, which it certainly does not.

This is why we are suggesting that other systems are used as well to ensure that all who should benefit in fact do so, with the ineligible and dishonest still excluded.

Labels: BACOSSI GOODS

posted by MrK @ 4:30 AM