Guest essay by Eric Worrall
People in the Solomon Islands and other remote regions are to be encouraged to open bank accounts to they can receive cash, every time one of the alphabet soup of aid agencies which operate in those regions feels they need to do more good.
Climate change makes cash and vouchers essential — here’s what is needed to make it happen
By Lisa Cornish // 21 May 2020
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The Pacific Cash Preparedness Partnership, a five-year initiative led by Oxfam, Save the Children, and the World Food Programme, is supporting research on cash and voucher assistance, or CVA, in the region. The partnership’s new “Solomon Islands Cash Transfer Feasibility Study” adds to a body of literature, including studies from Vanuatu in February 2019 and Fiji in May 2019, that is identifying the feasibility of CVA programming and what is required to support wider implementation.
“To be in a position to roll out cash programming after a disaster, we need to introduce the concept to communities, national and local governments, civil society organizations, and private sector companies,” Archie Law, humanitarian director for Save the Children Australia, told Devex. “It’s about setting up the systems first to ensure cash programming can be used in a fast, efficient, and dignified way straight after a disaster.”
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Most households that were surveyed preferred unconditional cash over other forms of short-term assistance to get needed items from local markets and canteens following a natural disaster.
The only challenge was the perception that cash could be spent on the “wrong things,” such as alcohol and tobacco — a notion that has been rejected by a World Bank study.
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With the need to better support remote communities immediately following disasters, the report provides a number of guidelines. A key recommendation is to work with commercial banks, remittance agencies, and mobile money providers to establish systems for mass registrations of bank accounts and other transfer systems to increase the number of cash-out services across the islands.
Partnering with local banks to encourage customers to open accounts and provide financial literacy training is also seen as a priority in building greater financial inclusion.
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Read more: https://www.devex.com/news/climate-change-makes-cash-and-vouchers-essential-here-s-what-is-needed-to-make-it-happen-97247
Wow. If I had to put up with those busybodies trying to organise my life, I’d probably want to buy more alcohol. I’m glad the World Bank produced a study which shows that recipients of their increasingly streamlined aid cash delivery system only spend the money on goods and services aid agencies would approve.
If they’re really talking about “remote communities immediately following disasters”, then cash is pretty much useless. After a typhoon or tsunami or volcanic eruption, infrastructure including transportation and electricity are disrupted. Bits in a bank database don’t help anyone. Immediate shipment of food, clean water, medical supplies, and shelter are essential to survival. Maybe cash can be used as kindling to light warming and cooking fires in such situations, but not much use in local stores that have no ability to replenish stock, have no refrigeration, have no ability to do electronic transactions (and customers have no ability to use ATMs to turn bits into cash). No, these folks are not talking about real natural disasters at all, but only about man-made political disasters like climate change reparations.
+1
TN: Right on. And isn’t the World Bank the lending institution that won’t finance any non solar/wind energy projects for third world countries thereby keeping them perpetually in the stone age?
More like a vehicle for the various ‘aid’ groups to make skimming off the top easier. It’s hard to make a profit off of aid delivered, for instance, by the US Navy.
Salute!
Actchally, Toby, cash or gold is better than all the credit cards and debit cards and such most folks are used to.
Been thru numerous hurricanes and such, plus forest fire evacuations 1500 miles away from here up in the high country.
The ATM doofers don’t work!! The gas station pumps don’t work! But you can trade a few bills for a gallon of gas or bag of Fritos with no problem. Hell, I drove two hundred miles of back roads without cell phone coverage to rescue my 85 year old parents after Katrina.
The post Katrina/Michael/etc. radio and television advice was worthless. Without a large amount of fuel and generator and satellite system, how could you even get to the “dot gov” website? Oh yeah, how many stranded folks on roof tops in New Orleans ever went to a “dot gov” website before the storm?
Best government help we pay for is the reverse 911 set up for fires and tornados. Doggone landlines work after storms and such while the cell towers are rubble just down the street. Have seen it over and over since the 90’s. Get the cheap ass landline with no long distance. Cheap, reliable and folks can call you, but you ain’t paying 50 cents a minute unless calling out.
Gums sends….
In California, our formidable Governor Gavin Newsom allocated $125 million to aid illegal aliens. The aid is being disbursed by Non-Governmental Organisations. In my next life, I want to be a NGO.
The NGO is probably charging a distribution and handling fee.
The NGO is probably charging a distribution and handling fees.
I am not an expert on how much of International aid money , flowing around the earth to various selected needy spots, is diverted into corrupt hands. However, I am not without experience in such matters, and the audacity of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats staggers the imagination. Some of you, without any direct experience in the matter, are thinking “I can imagine corruption” and what I am saying is you cannot, it is such a disgusting surprise. So virtue signal all you want by sending money, cash yet, all around the world, and try not to think about the corruption is supports. Disaster Relief? Opportunity writ large.
The Clintons can imagine. Exhibit A: The Clinton Crime Family Foundation.
Crooked leaders in Africa are called the “Wa-Benzi”, ie They of the Mercedes-Benzes.
NGO do-gooders are like newly-minted law degree recipients –
They’ve grasped the “what”, but as yet have no clue about the “why, how, who when, where”
These last 5 essential elements of achievement can only be garnered through years and years of practical application and experience in the real world.
Ain’t gonna happen as a UN or World Bank flunky.
Good luck with that.
Poor people, as a rule, can’t afford to have bank accounts. Because they’re, well, poor. They also don’t typically have either the ability or the mindset to put money away for the future. Their bank balance would almost always be $0, something banks frown upon.
I would suggest if they don’t have a connection they don’t make. Who needs to be tracked by a government giving them money?
“Climate change makes cash and vouchers essential — here’s what is needed to make it happen. By Lisa Cornish // 21 May 2020”
Big white man must take care of inept darkies and teach them a climate friendly lifestyle.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/03/06/sdg/
Slightly off-topic: Thanks to the virus, most groceries in my neighborhood no longer accept cash.
“LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE”
We’ve become a nation of sissyfied germophobes, and the pandemic feeds into that whole gestalt. Witness, for example, the pure hysteria-based banning of reuseable bags.
Well said. Once we react the tipping point, we’ll fall off the edge of the World.
Once we reach the tipping point ..
Chaamjamal,
+1000!
Hey, are you not on Twitter anymore? I miss you.
Condescending white liberals. Liberalism, it’s a mental illness.
As far as cash for booze and cigarettes, even a moron Left has to realize that cash is fungible, they just ignore that reality.
A dollar given to me that I didn’t expect to buy groceries means I have an extra dollar I have available now to buy MORE beer.
Like my $1,200 stimulus payment, fattening my monthly expenses, so that I’m thinking of going and getting a new semi-auto rifle and tricking it out with a suppressor. Made in the USA of course.
If you want a rationale against financing the dogoodery of those organisations, look no further.
Do they take monopoly money?
Of course Dear Leader up here in Can Ahh Duh will offer them billions of dollars,which will not enrich anyone as the Canadian Dollar will soon be on par with the Old Mexican Peso.
On the bright side we,Canadians,will all be Zillionaires..
What an excellent idea, Eric Worral. Top marks to you. One problem I can see is that many underdeveloped countries’ fiscal systems and currencies are not to be trusted. No good, for example, to issue more Zimbabwean cash to residents there!!
Should the cash perhaps come in some sound currency?
There is a very good reason for the “myth” that cash put into the hands of the indigent goes into alcohol, drugs, tobacco and maybe a few groceries. It is what happens! The majority of folk panhandling, washing windshields at red lights or receiving pogie each month from gov notoriously do this. It’s a lot like everything else these days, if it is politically incorrect to think so, then a wifty-poofty ‘study’ has to conclude that it isn’t so.
Look, I don’t even hold this behavior against them. There is a hard core of unemployable people, many of whom need some kind of psychological help. Not recognizing this because it is politically incorrect is a barrier to solving the problem for a certain number of them that might be rescued from this deadend life.
Regarding aid to corrupt governments in Africa, this has a long history. When I worked for the Geo Survey of Nigeria in the mid 1960s, I remember buying rice for fourpence a small scoopful (later learned the local citizen paid half this) and it was scooped out of a cardboard drum that said on it “A gift to the people of Nigeria from OXFAM. In later years, I mentioned this to OXFAM folk I ran into and the called me a liar. Yeah, that ought to do it.
I’ll move to Belize, if Y’all will streamline some pallets of cash to me!
And me too…I will be in Costa Rica or Southern Thailand suffering intolerable heat in January. Cash is good, but I accept Gold and Bitcoin. Will send receipt for your tax deduction.
These three gentlemen are the Welcoming Committee for the daily arrival of the Cargo Cult Cash Injection Ship which is docking just over out of sight. The bottle shop is on the left at the rear and is open for business.
The bottle shop did plenty of business that day… 🙂
I’m not sure whether you should write you name and “streamlined” in the one sentence. Although you would be enough to keep the whole village going for a while.
I was the electrical officer of HMAS Stalwart in 1986 after Cyclone Namu devastated the islands. When everything is flattened and there is little to buy, money is of little use, I suggest.
I offer the following as an example of practical, rather than theoretical, efforts to recover from such events.
https://www.navy.gov.au/hmas-stalwart-ii-part-2
Aid to the Third World has been described concisely as poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries.
That old chestnut again – cargo cult mentality in the name of climate change.
I bet the banks are promoting the idea.