By Mabinty M. Kamara
There are high hopes among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) owners across Sierra Leone over the ongoing emergency cash transfer scheme being implemented by the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA), but not all expectations are meant to be met.
The Emergency Cash Transfer is a project supported by the World Bank to help cushion the economic impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on vulnerable groups of people, including small businesses.
When COVID-19 started spreading across the world, before it finally hit Sierra Leone, there were a lot of fears that two sectors were going to be seriously affected; the health sector, because of the already weak infrastructure and systems in place, and businesses, due to many restrictive measures, including travel ban, which made it almost impossible for the movement of business people and their goods.
The project, totaling US$30 million, according to the NaCSA Program Manager, Information, Education and Communication, George Nyambe Williams, is targeted at 29, 000 beneficiaries countrywide. Some 2, 500 beneficiaries each in every one of the four regional headquarters towns: Port Loko, Makeni, Kenema and Bo. The bulk of the beneficiaries - 19, 000 – are in the Western Area Urban.
Each beneficiary is to receive the sum of Le1, 309, 000 (USD$135).
A further 35, 000 households would be enrolled to receive assistance under the National Social Safety Net (SSN) programme, which is the national flagship social protection programme for vulnerable households, Williams said.
“Petty traders make the bulk and the people who have downed tools because they have been redundant. The hotel workers, night club workers, the tour guides and commercial sex workers, because that was what their life depended on,” Mr Williams added. He noted that while these are the broad categories of beneficiaries, there were other categories depending on their vulnerability.
“Somebody redundant from work at Radisson Blu Hotel has different condition to that who worked at Red Gate,” he said.
Williams said the fund was initially meant to extend the Social Safety Net scheme under NaCSA, which started in 2014, but that President Julius Maada Bio requested that US$4 Million of the US$30million be kept aside as emergency fund in case of disaster or disease outbreak.
Two weeks after the launch of the program on February 27th this year, Sierra Leone recorded its index case of COVID on March 31st 2010.
The controversies
However good the initiative is, there are negative sides of it, especially in the implementation, caused by the high hopes it generated from among prospective beneficiaries. And Williams said they have always expected that, considering the high poverty rate in the country.
“We all know that everybody in Sierra Leone is poor and the demand for money will always be high. But one good thing that I want to tell you is that the implementation process in the four regional headquarters towns went successful and we did not hear any confusion,” he said,
He added: “It means that the spread here [Western Area] is larger than those areas.”
Williams said although 19, 000 spots was allocated for the Western Area Urban, that’s hardly enough.
“And in times of shortage, we hear that it’s survival of the fittest. So plenty people will cry, because a lot of people may not qualify or may not be reached, which may be due to a failure in the manner in which the questions were answered,” he said.
Isatu Kargbo, a single mother who sells foot wears at Abacha Street Market in Freetown, explains her experience of the whole exercise to Politico.
She said officials of the Freetown City Council (FCC) interviewed them during the fast month period.
“They asked many questions, from my business capital to even some personal issues that have to do with my family welfare. I took my time to respond to every bit of the questions. But now that it is verification time, one of the chairlady’s here, stopped the people from interviewing me, saying I was APC and that the money is for SLPP people,” she said.
Ms Kargbo eventually didn’t receive the money, according to her, and she believes it’s because of political considerations.
Sonna Sesay, another trader at Abacha Street, who have already benefitted from the cash transfer, told Politico that in as much as she had received the money, she was concerned that most of her colleagues were yet to get their share.
“I say thanks to the government for this support. When this problem came to the country, things went very bad for us, especially with the lockdowns. There were times we came the whole day without a single sale and in the end you ate from the capital, which is not good for business. But with this money now, even though it is small, I can add to my business,” she said.
Elezabeth Kainesie, Chairlady of the Abacha Street Market, who has also benefited from the cash, confirmed the existence of issues in the implementation process. She noted that some of the issues emanated from the fact that some people were not willing to register initially for fear that they were going to lose their business places. She also blamed it on the lack of cooperation of other chair ladies.
“The whole program started well, but there are some of my colleagues whom I work with who wanted to compromise the verification process.
One has a small table and she divided it into two, giving one to her children. I told her the money is for those who have tables and that if the process went smoothly and they (beneficiaries) were satisfied, we could settle all other personal matters. But she insisted that all those on her list must get the cash and I had no option but to comply because I work with her,” she said.
But according to Williams, the process used to verify and register beneficiaries, which he called the Light Proxy Means Test, knows no name, tribe or political affiliation. The information one provides, he said, determined whether they were qualified for the process or not.
“Just like we apply for visa, ODK (the computer software used in the verification process) does not ask for your tribe. It does not ask for your political affiliation. It asks about your capital, what you have been doing. So, once you have gone through the process, it is ODK that tells you are qualify. So it’s not NaCSA that gives the cash or it’s not about politics, because Kenema would not have cried foul,” he said
Despite Williams’ ascertain that the transfer scheme has been hitch-free in the provinces, Politico has reported instances of alleged irregularities in at least two district headquarters towns, notably Bo and Kenema.
Haja Marie Bob Kandeh, Vice President of the Sierra Leone Traders Union, who doubles as the President of the Market Women Association, casts doubt on the credibility of the process. She told Politico that the vulnerable business people who should benefit from the cash have not been benefitting.
“The money has criteria. They told us it’s for those who were affected by Coronavirus Disease, but we have found out that there are people with big businesses that are accessing that money,” she said.
According to Mrs Kandeh, initially the authorities involved the Traders’ Union and they asked them to provide names of affected people.
“So we took it to the City Council. But they said they were going to do a backup registration of 19, 000 names. You know that the moment you mention money in this country, everybody will want to seek his own interest first. And at the end of the day, the government also went and collect names of their members,” she said.
Mrs Kandeh added that the process was “highly political.”
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