Tanzanian Social Fund pilot of conditional cash transfers: experimenting on poorest people?
17 November 2008
Author: Krzysztof Hagemejer
Source: International Labour Organization (ILO)
The Community-Based Conditional Cash Transfer Pilot being implemented through Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF) aims to reach the most vulnerable elderly and children, such as those living in child-headed households, orphans and chronically ill children, the very poor or the very sick elderly without a caregiver. Households in 80 villages meeting these eligibility criteria are now being identified, registered and their data put into a database. Of these 80 villages, 40 will be randomly selected in what is called "treatment" villages and eligible households will start to be paid benefits early 2009. The payments will continue only if the beneficiaries meet additional behavioural conditions which are linked to school attendance for school-age children and visits to health facilities for small children and the elderly in order to get vaccination or medical examination and advice. Those who are eligible will, however, receive these benefits for a maximum of 20 months as the project foresees neither rolling out the scheme nationally nor continuation, at least for those who will have acquired benefit entitlements during the pilot.
The eligible poorest households in the other 40 villages will not be given any benefits as they are unlucky to live in a "control" group of villages. How they manage to survive in comparison to those getting benefits will be closely monitored for the purposes of a scientifically designed project evaluation exercise.
This raises serious ethical concerns. We know from other African pilot cash transfer schemes targeted at the most vulnerable that the majority of beneficiaries identified by communities as the most vulnerable have been surviving before the start of the pilot by begging for food in the neighbourhood. Experimenting on such extremely poor and vulnerable individuals just to prove scientifically what is intuitively obvious for everybody – that even small amounts of cash dramatically changes lives of these people – is not acceptable.
I hope, however, that the actual implementation of the project will follow a different path. The benefits should be paid to everybody meeting eligibility criteria in all covered villages. Effectiveness of conditionality can be tested in the following way: households in "treatment" villages receive a supplement to their benefits if they meet the conditionality and only basic benefits if they don't, while to those eligible living in "control villages", no conditionality is applied and they all receive the basic benefit. Basic benefit should be at least at the level foreseen now, that is 100% of the food poverty line for eligible elderly and 50% for eligible children. At the same time, the national debate and supporting analytical work should start to aim at designing, legislating and implementing a national social cash transfer's programme or a set of programmes aimed at various groups. Also, the organisers of the pilot should commit themselves to continuing financing and delivering the benefits beyond the planned project's duration to all beneficiaries who became entitled during the duration of the project as long as they are meeting the eligibility conditions.
Any social protection scheme creates an obligation towards the beneficiaries. Even under pilot schemes this obligation should be honoured and interests of the beneficiaries have to be protected.
Image Credit: Eric Miller / World Bank
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