An article on Social Protection mechanisms within A Covid-19 Pandemic

Forum on Social Protection under the theme ‘Social protection mechanisms in a covid-19 pandemic: understanding the intersection of impacts, response, and lessons’ Highlights of discussions The COVID-19 pandemic has had enormous negative socio-economic impacts and tested the resilience of people across all income levels. However, as with most crises, the poor disproportionately face the largest challenge in coping with economic shocks given their low asset base and social net worth. Under its Partnership Beyond Aid programme, funded by the UK Aid, STAR-Ghana Foundation collaborated with the Centre for Social Policy Studies (CSPS) of the University of Ghana to undertake an analysis of the State of Social Protection in Ghana, examining programs that were deployed in response to COVID-19 and identify new needs that have emerged as a result of the pandemic that has to be adequately addressed by existing interventions. On the 24th of February, STAR Ghana Foundation held a forum to disseminate the report and to build partnerships on taking forward the recommendations. The Forum was attended by stakeholders from Academia, International NGOs, Donor organizations, Ministries and Agencies, MMDAs, CSO, and professional bodies to Highlights from the Report Health • While the government has undertaken several and varied measures to contain the pandemic and control its impact, which include movement restrictions, PPE distributions, isolation, closure of places, there are gender and social inclusion dimensions which require some attention in the design and implementation of the measures. For instance, nose masks and facilities for hand washing were not customised to suit PWDs. The height and entire architecture of some veronica buckets for handwashing were beyond the reach of some PWDs due to the nature of their disabilities. Social distancing protocol was introduced without regard for PWDs such as the blind who needed regular assistants and human support in their daily movements. • The provision of the PPEs has helped in controlling the spread of the virus, the distribution was skewed towards schools and other formal institutions. People in the informal sectors such as traders at markets, commuters and operators of lorry stations were largely left to the benevolence of NGOs and philanthropist individuals. While children in schools were provided with PPE, their underprivileged counterparts in the streets and deprived communities were not. While there may currently be a lack of comprehensive data on COVID-19 vaccinations, there is every reason to expect that vaccines, as other COVID-19 related amenities and services are as unequal in distribution spatially and across income and social groups. • The shift of resources in the health sector to COVID-19 is one factor that has resulted in reduced access to other forms of health services for some vulnerable groups, including children. A UNICEF reports states that, a year into the pandemic, nearly one million children had not received routine health services during the pandemic (UNICEF, 2021). Recommendations • The health budget should be increased to the AU-recommended levels of 15% of annual public expenditure, with the increase going to address income and spatial inequities in health provisioning • In particular, resources can be directed to building and resourcing Community-Based Health and Planning Services (CHPS) compounds and other primary health care facilities whose models and physical facilities are more accessible to low-income and rural patients • Government to expand telemedicine and e-health in both lower and higher-level facilities across the country. Education • The government’s attempts at providing alternative methods of teaching and learning during the period of school closures to some extent widened the rural-urban, rich-poor, male-female, abled-disabled divides in accessing quality education because of the uneven distribution of the barriers to e-learning, including high cost, infrastructure, ICT skills, accessibility to quality internet connection and electricity. The major learning channels deployed for the e-learning (radio and TV) technically excluded persons with visual and hearing impairments. The learning gap was wider for girls because of gender division of labour which place on girls a disproportionate burden of domestic and care work. Finally, whereas employees in public schools were guaranteed their salaries and conditions of service the same cannot be said of teachers in private schools who are also tax payers. • The COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of schools has also had differential impacts on female and male learners. School closures have further deepened vulnerabilities associated with female learners in terms of increased engagement in domestic chores, teenage pregnancy, and child marriage, which pose risks to the education of girls. This has necessitated the strengthening of GES’s school re-entry policy to retain pregnant girls in schools, grant them maternity leave and readmit young school mothers to facilitate continuous education, and to prevent exclusion of pregnant school girls and young school mothers from education (STAR-Ghana Foundation and Bortei-Doku Aryeetey, 2021) Recommendations • Facilitate a regularization of GES collaborated Centre for National Distance Learning and Open Schooling (CENDLOS), Ghana Library Authority, and Scholastic for their services to become regular features GES service - to offer students access to the content on the iBox and iCampus, for online and self-guided learning, provide an online learning tool to students and online content at the KG and Lower Primary levels • Call for an increase in the budget allocation to the education and health sectors to meet the UNESCO threshold of 15% of the overall budget for education Livelihoods On a more positive note, the secretariat of the LEAP cash transfer improved payments in terms of promptness and regularity to beneficiaries • Ideally the social protection response to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic should have been, among other things, a scaling up of the levels of existing social assistance or the temporarily expansion of coverage to accommodate non-beneficiaries of existing social assistance, or both. However, due to the lack of nationwide household register for targeting, interventions have been fragmented and sporadic during the COVID-19 crisis, making it difficult to rely on existing social protection infrastructure to provide relief. The government has had to adopt multiple targeting schemes for the food distribution in the lock down areas as well as universal schemes to absorb the electricity and waters bills of the entire country because the shock affected almost the entire population. Key Recommendations • Government should invest resources to increase the number of households covered by LEAP, which would include existing beneficiaries’ households as well as those that may have fallen into poverty during the period of the pandemic. • As a matter of urgency, the Ghana Social Protection Bill must be passed to provide clear guidelines, resources, and legal backing for social protection measures in emergencies. Stakeholder Consensus on key action points to take forward • The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection has begun the development of a Shock Response & Emergency Strategy. Following issues raised around a coordinated response, and targeting of diverse needs, it is recommended that the Ministry builds consultations with civil society actors and relevant ministries for inputs into finalizing the strategy. • One thing to learn from the pandemic is prioritizing emergency preparedness. It is important that National Contingency Plan that profile risks, response, and responsibilities is put in place. From this plan, sector specific strategies can be developed. • The National Single Household Registry is a critical intervention to enable targeting for social protection intervention. It is recommended that household registry project is completed and used as reference for social protection support. • Government to see to the passage of the Ghana Social Protection Bill for effective targeting of the vulnerable during emergencies, and for better policy guidelines and resources to respond to the needs of the vulnerable during emergency