The government is preparing to provide financial assistance to single women below 60 years and partially disabled people after they were deprived of social security allowance for months due to the new regulation in the Social Security Act.

While the government has registered an amendment bill to remove the regulation, the Parliament is currently in recess.

So as a stop-gap measure, the government is preparing to provide financial assistance to the groups who have been bereft of the social security allowance. The assistance will be equivalent to the allowance for the first four months of the current fiscal year 2020-21.

“On Sunday, the home ministry wrote to the finance ministry seeking the latter’s approval to distribute financial assistance to the single women and disabled people who have been deprived of the social security allowance,” Jitendra Basnet, director general at Department of National ID and Civil Registration, told the Post. “Once the finance ministry gives its approval, it will be sent to the Cabinet for decision.”

Basnet said the move was aimed at providing financial succour to the deprived groups before the Dashain festival.
If the Cabinet takes the decision, it will benefit over 400,000 single women and partially disabled people, according to the department.

This is the second time the government is preparing to provide them with allowance in the form of financial assistance. A similar assistance was provided to them for the final four months of the last fiscal year 2019-20.

The government stopped providing the allowance to them in March after the new regulation was incorporated in the Social Security Act.

According to the Department of National ID and Civil Registration, there are around 350,000 single women below 60 years and over 80,000 people living with partial disability.

The government will have to arrange over Rs3 billion for the financial assistance programme.
Single women have been receiving Rs2,000 and disabled people Rs1,600 per month as social security allowance.

The home ministry’s move comes following a letter sent by the Ministry of Women, Children and Senior Citizens on October 1 requesting for necessary arrangements to distribute allowance to the deprived groups.
According to the Social Security Act, only single women aged above 60 years are eligible to get social security allowance. In order to become eligible for allowance, single women under 60 years need to prove that they have no source of income or have fixed income below the threshold determined by the government.

Single women under 60 years were included in the social security allowance programme in 2009 following the Supreme Court’s ruling that ordered the government not to discriminate single women based on their age.

Likewise, section 8 of the current law states that the people with total disability shall get disability allowance in a sum specified by the government as the social security allowance.

The legal provision made little headlines after it was passed by the parliament. But, after the government stopped providing the allowance in March, it created an uproar in Parliament and among stakeholders.

In response, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on May 25 had announced that nobody would be denied the allowance that they had been receiving. The government then swiftly introduced an amendment bill to undo the regulation that had blocked the allowance to many single women and disabled people.

The government had introduced the regulation with the intention of cutting back on the spendings in social security.

Lily Thapa, founder of Women for Human Rights, said the law was a devastating blow to single women, most of whom are poor, illiterate and have little support system.

“Several of these women are totally dependent on state allowance,” she told the Post. “Most of them are working in informal job markets such as restaurant and party palaces. After the coronavirus pandemic, they have lost their jobs which have made their lives more difficult. Depriving them of the allowance in such a situation is inhuman.”

As per the population census 2010-11, there are 498,606 widows and single women.

Raju Basnet, general secretary of the National Federation of Disabled-Nepal, had recently told the Post that the government should introduce an ordinance to start the distribution of the social security allowance to the concerned groups.

“Social security allowance is the fundamental rights of the disabled people. The current social security law is against the constitution,” he had said.