No work, no money: Task force urged to help the poor living with COVID-19

Sri Lanka will be ramping up action to protect the poorest of the poor and set the stage for rapid recovery of the coronavirusaffected economy through the efforts of a newly appointed Presidential Task Force on Economic Revival and Poverty Eradication, the Presidential media division said.

The immediate task of this force would be to revive the economy amidst COVID-19 crisis promptly but not after ending the deadly pandemic, economic experts said adding that there won’t be an economy to resurrect if the crisis continues for a long period.

“It is not difficult to create an environment conducive for the continuation of economic activities while maintaining social distancing. What we have to do is to open offices and factories soon for workers even for 10 to 20 hours daily to catch up the loss of man hours,” a senior Central Bank official has said in a Facebook post, which reflected his own views and not that of the organisation he works for.

“People have been given a choice to select from either not getting infected by COVID-19 or putting food on the table by resuming work for the sake of their families. Poverty- stricken daily wage earners and self employed slum dwellers cannot be confined for so long to their shanties. If one of them get infected, the whole cluster could be affected within days as there is no way for them to maintain social distancing,” he said.

These people can withstand any virus and they don’t care about any hygienic practices and what they need to resume their work for living, he pointed out adding that these people are not able to isolate themselves as easily to help contain the virus.

The loss of low-paid work has driven mass exodus rural workers from cities to their villages, spiking fear that many of them will fall back into poverty.

“The Presidential Task Force with a mandate of alleviating poverty should find an immediate solution to this issue of vulnerable groups as those people will not sacrifice their lives in hunger for the sake of the middle class and the elite,” the official added.

The daily lives of the hardest hit, the dailypaid – labourers, masons- carpentersplumbers- electricians, street vendors, 3-wheeler drivers, workers in SMEs, and small contractors is tremendous and damage to the economy is immense.

Pain is considerable in less well- off classes. Sri Lankan workers numbering 6-7 million are employed as daily wage earners. Millions of rural farmers are among the hardest hit. These people will not continue to obey ‘stay-athome’ orders after spending their Rs. 5000 dole given by the government.

People who are suffering from the highest level of poverty will need a minimum of Rs. 16,700 for their expenses, former parliamentarian Dr. Harsha De Silva emphasised, adding that the Rs. 5000 concessionary allowance is not enough and the government should be more sensitive.

He noted that this conclusion on the actual income- expenditure status of the poor people has been arrived at carefully analysing and computing available statistics.