THE IDEA WAS GOOD BUT FOR THE EXECUTION

This week the government was finalising paying out the Covid-relief monies to the 500,000 eligible households.

First off this was a better intervention than the posho and beans that were dished out last year, which benefitted a few connected people more than the intended beneficiaries.

I was shocked to learn recently that

of the sh59b that was earmarked for the distribution of that posho and beans, easily half of it went into logistics...

On this front alone, that the sh53b will get to the intended beneficiaries, this has been a succcessful intervention. Going by this logic more people have benefitted frrom the sh100,000 than those that benefitted from last year’s food handout.

Of course there was also the argument that, what if I don’t need or want or like posho and beans? Your relief is more a poke in the eye than help to me. With money I can decide to buy charcoal instead or pay for medicine or send it to a more needy relative, that is more meaningful relief than the photo opportunity of distributing food.

But now that the intervention is coming to a close, it’s a good time to look back and assess whether it met its intended goals and how can we do it better in future.

First off notice that we are completing the process at the end of the 42-day lockdown. Talking about shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. This is a major failure and that is where the assessment has to start. I would like to give the government the benefit of doubt, but previously we know that delays heighten crises, allow for ignoring established procedures leaving room for grubby fingered opfficials to make a killing.

We urgently need to invest in data gathering and management. A lot of time was spent trying to find out the intended beneficiary because we were using 20th century, manual processes like asking village chairmen who their vulnerable are. Also the delays came as result of verifying the intended beneficiaries, a discrepancy between their names, phone numbers and ID numbers  led to rejection. No suprises that the most discrepancies were in the Kampala area. This data should be at the end of a button click, gathered and updated in real time. It would have meant that by the end of the first week of the lockdown we would have sent the money.

Also with this we would have a real assessment of who the vulnerable are. While we were constrained by finances, the 500,000 families were not arrived at scientifically – be suspicious of round numbers when dealing with human situations. Also sh100,000 handout was not arrived at scientifically, it just sounds like a nice number to dish out, how do we know the real need was not sh78,000 or sh111,000 per family.

There have been suggestions that to speed it up even more a voucher system should have been employed. Under this scheme beneficiaries would have vouchers acceptable by everybody to buy what they want. But knowing our government’s reputation as a bad dedbtor, this would only stress local economies more. So forgoing speed for efficiency is a good idea. Also it means that even informal businesses, like your neighbourhood rolex seller will be a beneficiary.

In the long term with better data collection and management government can extend this to other relief interventions. In other places such interventions are targetted at single mothers or out of work people or invalids and are ongoing. The telephone system has shown to be a cost effective way of distributing this, we just need to smoothen the means of identifiying beneficiaries.

Related to that the importance of the ID has been shown. People were reluctant to get IDs for all sort of funny reasons, never mind the usual suspects who hold all government programs in suspicion. But even more mindboggling is the number of IDs,  thousands of them that lie unclaimed. Sometimes in this country you don’t know whether to cry or laugh.

We criticise government for poor service delivery but refuse to show up for even the poor services...

These shortcomings not withstanding government took the right route in dishing out cash, but there is a lot of room for improvement in getting out such relief in a timely and appropriate manner.