One of the focuses of Citizens’ Charter is inclusion and better reintegration of Returnees and Individually Displaced Persons (IDP) in the communities. The Maintenance and Construction Cash grant (MCCG) program is intended to provide a source of emergency cash through short term employment for the most vulnerable households, as well as urgently needed funding for basic infrastructure in communities that are housing Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) and Returnees. Given the limited public resources and services available in rural communities, a large number of in-migrant families can create resentment within the host community. This may be exacerbated by the surplus labor created by the migrant influx, making ‘integration’ more difficult.
The emphasis of the Citizens’ Charter on poverty dynamics in the community development planning phase, an intense 4 months process, ensures that communities work through pro-poor approaches and place the poor at the center of their development activities. District selection is based on high in-migration trends: implementing in areas with relatively large numbers of Returnees from Pakistan and IDPs is to ease the influx by providing short-term employment to poor and very poor households from the host and in-migrant communities.
MCCG initiative builds on the community development planning process of the Citizens’ Charter, where spatial distribution of public resources and the socio-economic differentiation is analyzed. The resources map and the well-being / poverty analysis are crucial in fund allocation (which resources to repair or where to build new infrastructure in relation to existing trends) and targeting.
The beneficiary identification in MCCG is based on the Citizens’ Charter well-being / poverty analysis beneficiary. In the participating communities, 35% of all households qualify for 40 days of paid labor. This amount is roughly sufficient to mitigate the income shortages that lead to seasonal hunger in the winter season when in large parts of the country agricultural labor activities and construction ceases. The daily wage rates have been set at AFN 350. This will allow the program to better perform its social protection function.
So far, Citizens’ Charter in the rural areas is working in 2,325communities and in 326 communities funds have disbursed and the work is ongoing; in 81communities proposals have been prepared and they are pending review; whilst 1918 communities are in the process of preparing their proposals. As of end of April, 24,614numbers of individuals are working, benefitting 72,508households. In total 1,509,054 individuals and 251,509 households will benefit from the income.
