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THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX
Poverty has never been a popular discussion topic
for government leaders. Ali Moselhi, head of the newly created Ministry
of Social Solidarity, believes it should. He says the time has come
to give due attention to the estimated 15 million Egyptians living
in poverty, the majority of whom live on less than a £E 6
a day.
BY REHAB EL-BAKRY
Ali Moselhi might seem an odd choice as champion of the poor. After
all, the newly appointed minister of social solidarity has no academic
or career background in development. His military service and career
has been solidly grounded in technology. He spent three years as
head of the National Postal Authority (NPA), prior to which he served
as an IT consultant to then-minister of communications and IT Ahmed
Nazif, as well as former prime minister Atef Ebeid.
“I don’t come from a development background,” he
admits, “but the good thing about coming from the IT sector
is that it makes you very good at identifying the root causes of
problems as opposed to the symptoms. This is exactly what we need
right now... to identify the problems with the current system and
find ways to [fix them and] to make development effective and sustainable.”
The Ministry of Social Solidarity was among the ministries created
during the cabinet shuffle of December 2005, combining the portfolios
of the former ministries of social affairs and domestic supply.
The term “social solidarity” might seem a throwback to
the heyday of socialism, but capitalists can rest easy, Moselhi
assures, explaining that the name refers to the ministry’s
role, not its economic ideology. “This is the first time we
have a ministry [based on] the idea of development in the form of
social solidarity between the government and the beneficiaries –
citizens, families and the private sector,” he says.
The Egyptian government has provided direct and indirect subsidies
to citizens since the 1950s, a service that Moselhi says is part
of its fundamental role. With 41 million Egyptians currently receiving
some form of financial or in-kind aid from the government, the need
for ensuring efficient use of the allocated budget has never been
greater. “The amount of money allocated to subsidies and social
support for the poor is increasing every year,” he says. “If
the level of satisfaction among citizens is also increasing, then
there’s no harm. The problem is that these subsidies constitute
a huge [portion of the] budget and are not achieving satisfaction.”
The government allocated £E 13 billion to various subsidy
and social assistance programs in FY 2004-05. This included about
£E 7.2 billion for subsidized bread and £E 4.2 billion
for ration cards, which give poor families access to subsidized
foodstuffs such as rice, oil, sugar and tea. The government also
handed out £E 1.2 billion in cash as part of its Social Pension
Compensation program, which provides assistance to cover daily living
expenses.
The problem, as Moselhi sees it, is that the government has no data
on those who receive these subsidies and cash distributions. “We
don’t have a feel for the people we serve,” he admits.
“We don’t know anything about them or about how effective
the aid that we provide them is.”
But this is due to change. Moselhi revealed to Business Monthly
that he has an admittedly ambitious plan to gain a solid understanding
of exactly where the government’s money is going, how it’s
being used and how effective it is in meeting the needs of the poor.
By tracking the millions of ration card transactions and cash assistance
payments, he hopes to create effective tools for sustainable development.
It’s a grand plan, but changes on this scale are nothing new
for Moselhi, who has demonstrated a pronounced ability to give new
shape to apparently immutable entities. As head of the National
Postal Authority, he was the driving force behind the organization’s
massive facelift, which transformed the country’s postal service
from an antiquated government agency into an efficient, customer
service-oriented organization in just three years. His plans for
the Ministry of Social Solidarity are even more ambitious, yet the
similarities are striking: both involve full-scale retraining of
employees, restructuring, complete reassessment of services provided
and performance evaluation.
Moselhi explains that in all the years that Egypt’s subsidy
program has existed, little has been done to treat recipients as
anything more than file numbers – an imprecision that has created
a window for abuse. “Professional conmen are the number one
beneficiaries of our programs,” he says. “This means that
there are people who might really need the assistance who aren’t
getting it.”
To combat this phenomenon, Moselhi plans to work closely with the
Center for Sociological & Criminological Studies, the so-far
unutilized research arm of the ministry. The center is currently
developing an information questionnaire that will be distributed
to an initial sample of 3,000 to 5,000 families that receive the
ministry’s services – “clients,” as Moselhi
calls them. Social workers will be available to assist illiterate
clients in filling in the forms.
The resulting information will be used to identify and weigh the
variables that should be taken into consideration when the ministry
decides who needs which type of aid. These variables will be used
to establish correlations between poverty and education level, geographic
location and source of income.
Moselhi points out that even such basic factors as these have never
been subjected to rigorous quantitative analysis by the government.
“Once the initial sample is assessed, we will fully deploy
the model, starting with the poorest areas, such as Minya, Sohag,
parts of Assiut, Fayoum, Beni Suef and informal settlements. The
key is targeting the poorest of the poor,” he says. “The
wider survey will be conducted to identify the 3 million of the
poorest Egyptians and to target programs to support them.”
Once identified, these 3 million will take part in the country’s
first Smart Card initiative, an inter-ministerial project to be
carried out in cooperation with the ministries of administrative
development, communication and information technology, health and
education. The project will create an automated system that tracks
the forms of aid to which each individual or family is entitled,
as well as their responsibilities as clients. “This will be
the first time we create a mutual agreement with our clients,”
Moselhi says. “They have rights in terms of aid, but they also
have responsibilities, which is [part of] a new social contract,
so to speak.”
The new smart cards would show, for instance, whether a client has
school-age children, whether those children are registered for school
and whether they have received their required immunizations. Under
this rubric, school attendance and immunization are considered responsibilities
incumbent on clients, and the cards would be used to track compliance.
“This will be one of the ways in which the government encourages
sustainable development,” Moselhi explains. “We are asking
them to do things that are good for them, but that will also help
them stand on their own two feet in the long term.”
While the survey is being prepared, the ministry will look inwards,
training the social workers who interact with clients. “When
I talk about training people,” he explains, “that includes
everything from upgrading their technical skills to reminding them
that they are dealing with people who deserve respect and kindness,
especially because they are poor.”
He says the ministry’s goal is to serve people. Whereas previous
administrations have kept their best personnel tucked away in plush,
air-conditioned offices, Moselhi plans to put them on the front
line – deploying them in the social services sector where they
will deal directly with the public. “We will ensure that [our
employees] are delivering the services to the client professionally
and compassionately. If they need training to be nice, we will give
it to them.”
The heart of the employee upgrade will be an improved work environment.
Moselhi, a firm believer that a dignified workplace makes for better
employees, says he will renovate the ministry’s offices in
various governorates, or move them if needed, to create a suitable
work environment. “If we don’t respect the dignity of
our employees, how can we expect them to respect the dignity of
the people they serve?” he asks. “We have to meet with
clients in a decent office.”
Following an initial inspection of the ministry’s facilities
earlier this year, Moselhi was shocked to discover that over half
of its social services offices were without telephones. “I
don’t know how they communicate with the head office or how
they report results,” he says. In response, he has laid plans
to standardize the IT component of these offices, a strategy he
employed during his makeover of the postal system. “All offices
will have not only telephone lines, but also an ADSL connection
and access to a network that will connect all these offices and
the head office.”
While Moselhi aims at fully utilizing the tools available within
the ministry, he says that there exists a further resource that
has yet to be tapped: civil society. According to Moselhi, there
are over 20,000 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) currently
registered in Egypt, a source of expertise and assistance that the
ministry must use to its advantage. Historically, the chief obstacle
to cooperation has been the adversarial nature of the relationship
between NGOs and the government, something Moselhi plans to change.
“These NGOs can provide great support for the initiatives that
we are trying to introduce,” he says. “If just 4,000 of
the NGOs currently working in Egypt provided support, that would
be tremendous manpower and know-how.”
Unfortunately, he says, these organizations are often abused by
their employees, a situation he plans to rectify by revising the
laws that regulate NGO activities, and creating an independent body
to supervise the accreditation and monitoring of NGOs. “I believe
that development work requires more ethics and rules than running
a private business,” he stresses. “There needs to be more
stringent rules, because in development there are people counting
on you and failure to deliver is not an option. This is not about
working with the poor to make yourself feel better.”
He insists that NGOs should be welcomed as effective partners in
sustainable development, but says their participation must be subject
to certain conditions. “At the moment, NGOs are simply allowing
employees to use or abuse them for their personal benefit. That’s
not why they [should] exist,” he says. His hope is to partner
with effective NGOs and work together for the common goal of alleviating
poverty in Egypt.
In his typical blunt manner, Moselhi allows that observers will
probably view him as more of a dreamer than a realist. In response,
he holds fast to the belief that hope is absolutely central to his
organization’s activities. His goal is to halve the number
of Egyptians living in poverty within five years. “It’s
ambitious, but doable,” he says, adding that developing trust
will be the biggest challenge. “We have to trust ourselves,
people need to trust us and we need to trust them. Of all the things
that we have to work on, building trust will be the hardest component,
but also the most important.”
He says the government will have to take the first step. “Once
we do that, and deliver on what we promise, the trust will come.”
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