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One hopeful solution comes from "conditional cash transfers" which means that cash is paid to beneficiaries if certain conditions are satisfied. In Pakistan’s Punjab province for example, families receive 200 Rupees a month per girl to ensure that their daughters attend school, after the headmistress verifies attendance. As a result girls’ enrollment in secondary schools in the 15 poorest districts in Punjab has increased by 60 percent from 175,000 to 280,000 since 2003. The notion of conditional cash transfers which are still relatively new to South Asia was introduced at a regional workshop on Promoting Pro-Poor Human Development: the Role of Safety Nets which was held in Lahore on March 6 to 8, 2007. The workshop was jointly designed and organized by the World Bank Institute and the South Asia Human Development Department of the World Bank and hosted by the Government of Punjab. Some 100 representatives of Ministries of Social Welfare, Education, and Health from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka participated.
With increasing distances for high schools, girl drop-out rates rise.
Hence, in 2005, the stipends were extended to high school girls as well.
In Bangladesh girls and boys have equal enrollment rates at the secondary
level, thanks to a similar stipend program started in
1990.
As girls go to school in droves thanks to the conditional cash transfer programs, new challenges arise such as hiring more teachers, building new schools and ensuring that the quality of services can keep up with the demand. Pakistan has also drafted a National Strategy on Social Protection, among the first to do so in the region. Zobaida Jala, Federal Minister for Social Welfare and Special Education, pointed out: “The strategy’s centerpiece is to initially direct support to the 10 percent most vulnerable households through conditional cash transfer programs for education, health, and livelihoods.” This is a necessary step since in Pakistan every 10th child dies before his or her 5th birthday – despite the country’s annual growth of around 6 percent. While the early successes of conditional cash transfers speak for themselves, there remain many issues to be looked at while the programs further develop. The most importantly is how to improve the accountability of cash transfer programs. But it is also important to determine how best to link with microfinance programs, how to balance in-kind with in-cash support, when to graduate beneficiaries to become self-sustainable, and how to equip beneficiaries with tools to track their entitlements. A first step might be to increase community participation at all stages starting with public information campaigns, and strengthened monitoring and evaluating to know if the programs are on track. |