A female vendor in a vegetable market in Pettah, Colombo (Photo credit: Nazly Ahmed)

• Says now is time to turn crisis into an opportunity to build a resilient and fair social protection system 
• Notes that increased transparency, inclusion, adaptability and accountability mechanisms key to ensure establishment of an improved welfare system
• Proposes three measures that will make social protection works in Sri Lanka

Given that half of the population living in poverty in Sri Lanka is not covered by social protection schemes, the World Bank stressed it is essential to have increased transparency, inclusion, adaptability and accountability mechanisms to ensure the establishment of an improved welfare system.

“As Sri Lanka works to recover and reset from its worst economic crisis in decades, now is the time to turn crisis into an opportunity to build a resilient and fair social protection system that benefits the people who need it most – Sri Lanka’s poor and vulnerable,” the World Bank said.

Asserting the island nation needs a social protection system that serves its poor, the World Bank proposed three measures that can be taken to overcome the weaknesses of the existing system.

The first is to unbundle the fragmented social protection system, which can be done via the Welfare Benefit Board (WBB), which was established with the support of the World Bank-financed Social Safety Nets Project to streamline the fragmented social protection system and adopt technology to increase efficiency. 
This will allow recipients to withdraw money whenever needed, without queuing in government offices.  As part of the welfare benefits information system, the information of those who request social protection has been digitised, allowing the government to review and update the cash transfer recipient list constantly. 

This also complements the use of QR codes and the Aswasuma mobile app in collecting data from applicants.

The second is to build strong governance, transparency and accountability into the system. One major reason for exclusions and inclusion errors are to be due to political influence on determining eligibility. Since the WBB has started collecting data covering the entire country to identify eligible beneficiaries, the World Bank said its verified data and system can be used since it is transparent and free of political influence.  The development lender noted that for the system to be more beneficial for the poor, the eligibility criteria and targeting methodology need to be reassessed on a regular basis and made more robust.   Lastly, the World Bank said efforts must be made to engage with citizens early and often to have a strong social protection system.

“As Sri Lanka reforms its social protection system, it needs to use methods to engage citizens to get their feedback on how best a social protection system can meet their needs. This also ensures that the system is adaptive, ensuring support to those who are adversely affected by shocks such as natural disasters and economic crises,” the World Bank said.
It added that its global experience shows that having active citizen engagement plays a vital role in establishing resilient and adaptive social protection systems. 
The development lender stressed that it is essential to use the input received from citizen engagement to carry out periodic reviews of how the social protection system is actually working on the ground and to include a grievance-handling mechanism.  For this, the WBB is setting up a grievance mechanism to flag problems and persistent issues in the system, so that they can be fixed.