TITLE:
Egypt’s National Social Protection Response to Vulnerable Groups during COVID-19
AUTHORS:
Rihan Wu
KEYWORDS:
Egypt, COVID-19, Social Protection Responses, Vulnerable Groups
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.9 No.9,
September
6,
2021
ABSTRACT: Since
March 2020, the Coronavirus has widely spread in Egypt and negatively affected people’s lives, especially the vulnerable
groups. The government, private sectors, and social societies had played
significant roles in supporting the needed
groups to overcome the crisis. The present article has studied the Egyptian
authorities’ measures implemented to mitigate the pandemic’s negative impact
on the vulnerable groups—women, children, and informal workers. Confronting the sudden crisis, the Egyptian government
swiftly responded the most by being the first country to empower women
and financially support informal workers. However, some flaws appeared during
operations as a result of poor
infrastructure. We proposed some recommendations, for instance, increase
transparency in Takaful and Karam Programme’s operations and extend the
coverage of the programme; prevent school drop-outs in child laborers, and build a complete informal workers’ database that
shall help reduce vulnerability and build resilience to future sudden
shocks in Egypt.