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Experts stress social audit for safety net programmes

Star Business Report
Social audit will reduce corruption from the country and ensure better transparency and accountability in the government’s social safety net programmes, experts said yesterday.
Social audit is a tool for community participation to measure the effectiveness of development programmes.
“The monitoring system of the social safety net programmes through social audit should be strengthened,” said Meher Afroze Chumki, parliament member and chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on the ministry of women and children affairs.
She spoke at a seminar on "Sharing result of social audit on VGD: way forward" in the capital.
Social audit facilitates a process to create opportunity to review, identify gaps and programme results by the society, she said. It will also help the government decide on new safety net programmes, Chumki said.
She said chairmen and members of Union Parishads and field-level government officials are liable for the corruptions taking places at that level.
"Awareness programme on social audit is important for them."
Social audit looks for effectiveness of vulnerable group development (VGD)
programme in poverty reduction, she said. A VGD cardholder gets 30kg rice every month, as per the government policy.
The programme was organised by Bangladesh Institute of Theatre Arts (BITA) in partnership with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Promoting Governance, Accountability, Transparency and Integrity Project (PROGATI).
About 64 percent of the people who have 19,634 VGD cards are ineligible for VGD programmes, as their husbands or other adult members contribute to their families, according to the social audit report on the VGD project.
OfVGD cardholders, 79.56 percent are selected by Union Parishads, 20.44 percent get the cards on political recommendations while 4.05 percent pay fees to get the cards, according to the report.
Political affiliation helps people get different types of cards, said Kazi Nobiul Haque, adviser to BITA, who presented the keynote paper.
Experts at the seminar recommended fixing a specific date for food distribution, filling vacant posts of women affairs officers and disclosing proper identification of field level government officers.
PROGATI is trying to ensure transparency and accountability in Bangladesh, said Dennis Gallagher, chief of party of USAID PROGATI project.