Ghada Waly on social protection and youth employment

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• published: 29 Apr 2016
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Larry Reed, director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign, interviews Ghada Waly, Egypt's Minister of Social Solidarity. Minister Waly explains that the value-add of the social program is to prevent children from dropping out of school and entering the labor market too early. There is also an expansion of this program to provide school lunches at primary public schools, thus solving the problem of malnutrition because of low caloric intake and alleviating the burden on families of feeding their children. The social protection program also invests infrastructure, providing labor intensive labor employment to poor youth who are unemployed or seasonal workers. They are building and paving roads, cleaning canals, shoring up the stone walls along the Nile, improving housing, and other such projects in return for a small income. The social protection program is also using technology to distribute the cash payment via post offices, banks, and a payment card. In addition, they are building a uniform database across the social protection program, NGOs and other institutions serving the poor, government agencies, and more to be able to screen for eligibility to the cash transfer program. Below are select excerpts from the interview. "Closing the gaps between rural areas and urban areas, disparities are being addressed and vulnerabilities are being addressed. Our social protection program is partly a safety net where cash is being provided to the poorest of the poor, those unable to provide for themselves be it because of disability, be it because of age, or be it because of being in a geographically distressed area away from development where income opportunities are limited." ... "There is also a big labor-intensive employment program where there are infrastructure investments in labor-intensive activities. Those take place in villages building and paving roads, cleaning canals, stoning river Nile banks, [and] improving housing. So, [these] many small-scale, labor-intensive program targeting the poor youth that are unemployed or seasonal workers that are unemployed. There is also an access to finance program where there is a whole list of incentives and facilities given to those institution that are willing to provide credit to the poor. So, we want to provide access to finance to the poor. We want to provide food to those who need it. We also have a bread subsidy program and a food subsidy program that is also being revamped, efficiencies being increased, and also we are looking at targeting. Targeting is very important for us because, when you have limited resources and you have a huge need for support, you really need to make sure that support goes to those who need it. So, including women and youth, going to the poor rural areas, doing better targeting, and increasing the efficiency of the social programs is what we do under the social protection umbrella." ... "So, you really want to know what are people getting so that you identify who are excluded and go to those excluded. The more difficult you make it for people to join the program and to continue screening and certification, the more you can improve your targeting. The other element is social accountability. You want to be very transparent, and you want to announce who is getting what so that if people have concerns, you can come and report that there is fraud here or that there is a mistake there or that this woman is a landowner who has enough income and should not be a part of your program. So, different tools combined together, but what a focus on efficiency and goo targeting."