“The increased rate of poverty due to Covid-19 has left the nutrition security of the country at risk. The physical growth of one-third children of the country has been interrupted due to undernutrition.”
Mohammad Mizanul Haque Kazol, National Poverty and Social Protection Policy Advisor of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, made the statement while delivering a technical session on Nutrition Sensitive Social Protection in the context of Bangladesh on Monday.
Quoting a research conducted by BRAC on ‘Economic Impact of Covid-19 and way forward for Bangladesh’, Mizanul Haque said that 95 percent households experienced income loss and 51 percent households’ income reduced to almost zero due to Covid-19.
He added that three percent households did not have any food, 16 percent had only 1-3 days’ food, and 22 percent households have 30 or more days’ food. The importance of social security has increased manifold during the current situation.
Mizanul Haque also mentioned that the government of Bangladesh adopted the social security strategy in the year 2015 and life cycle approach included in the strategy as part of bringing reform in the existing social protection system.
He also highlighted few weakness of the social protection strategy which includes duplication of beneficiary due to lack of monitoring, insufficient allowance against the requirement of the poor, lack of coordination among the implementing ministries and institutions and inadequate allowance for the child, elderly people and persons with disabilities.
Md. Elius Bhuiyan, Director (Training and Studies) of PIB, Naoki Minamiguchi, Chief Technical Advisor of MUCH project, FAO, and Feroz Al Mahmud, Research Director of the Ministry of Food delivered speech at the webinar with Zafar Wazed, Director General of PIB, in the chair.
Zafar Wazed in his closing remarks said that there was a lack of awareness among the common people in selecting balanced diet. Still a large number of children are suffering from undernutrition despite economic progress which led to reduce poverty. He also said that if the government failed to provide its citizen with proper nutritious food the future generation would not be strong enough.
Minamiguchi in his speech mentioned that the social protection was one of the main pillar to address second country investment plan on nutrition sensitive food system.
He also discussed the four dimension of food security which includes food availavility, access to food, utilization of food and stability of all three dimension.
The half-day discussion was participated, among others by, Wajia Khatun, National Nutrition Specialist of FAO, Executive Editor of Dhaka Tribune Reaz Ahmed, Special Correspondent of Daily Prothom Alo, President of Agricultural Reporters Forum Ashraf Ali, Deuty Chief Reporter of Kaler Kantho Toufiq Maruf, City Editor of Daily Janakantho Kawar Rahman and Special Correspondent of Bangladesh Post Nurul Islam Hasib.
A total of 35 journalists who cover and agriculture beat for their respective media took part in the webinar.
