Sanity check on more handouts

President Anura Kumara Disanayake has hit the election trail in full swing. Yesterday he announced at an election rally in Mannar that the Government will extend the ‘aswesuma’ social welfare program to include an additional 400,000 families from June onwards while also promising 30,000 new State sector jobs.

This he said shows that this is “a Government that genuinely cares for its people.” He said the economy is doing well enough to allow for such expenditure with foreign reserves at a 5.6 year high and the rupee in a stable position.

Already around 1.7 million people are beneficiaries of the aswesuma program. Add another 400,000 to this it will be over two million. State sector workers stand at around 1.3 million at present and with another 30,000, there will be an additional strain on already struggling State coffers.

It’s election time and no one will blame the President for his generosity towards the public. Such offers are called election promises, usually made during national level elections, but the NPP is not taking chances and is eager to gain control of all local authorities as well after winning both the Presidential and Parliamentary polls. It’s likely to win comfortably given the weak Opposition it is up against but that aside, the President’s election promises are not wise given the country’s economy is far from out of the woods and many challenges including new ones in the face of US tariffs, are on the way.

Sri Lanka has been a welfare state and it’s been a great boon to the people of this country. All will agree that free health and education are indispensable and should be accessible to all citizens (even non-citizens have access to free health in Sri Lanka unlike in most other countries who demand foreigners pay even to access free healthcare in their countries). There is also free higher education for those who can find a placement in a state university with monthly bursaries and scholarships for a sizable number of students. This is followed by the generous recruitment made to the State sector so that local graduates can also get a job with a Government pay followed by a pension when they retire.

Aswesuma, the current social protection program meant to uplift the lives of the poor and vulnerable, is the successor to the Samurdhi program as the Janasaviya program, all initiated with the same objectives. The current program is managed by the Welfare Benefits Board (WBB) and those who are beneficiaries get cash transfers each month. Poverty remains high in the country and some sort of State intervention to assist such families is a must but what has failed in all these programs is evaluation of the benefits of such initiatives as well as proper measures to wean people away from welfare and make them independent of State welfare.

Such programs in the past have been riddled with corruption, political interference and inefficiency. With those handling the programs at the grassroots the same people, it is unlikely a change in Government will make much of a difference in the way the program is run. The more people remain in welfare, the more dependent they become on the State and the more difficult it is to break the dependency syndrome.

The JVP-NPP, steeped in socialist policies, (though now forced into an IMF program against its wishes) will push the country towards more welfare dependent citizens than independent citizens. The craze for State sector jobs remains high mainly because it is seen as a stable form of employment followed by a lifelong pension as opposed to the private sector where benefits are performance-based and there is no free ride till retirement.

No country will prosper with an overload of welfare. While more must be done to improve the State-run education and health sectors, there should be no handouts for able bodied persons who have the physical and mental ability to work for a living. Otherwise the Government may win votes by making election promises but the country’s economic recovery will not take years, but decades.