Basic Services and Social Protection

CEPA has been examining the connection between poverty and quality, timeliness, experience and outcomes of public services in a number of research     and advisory studies. Its work focuses on the social protection and service delivery in education, health, transport, water, and     waste management sectors. Our studies find that access to services in Sri Lanka used to be reasonably good,  but experience and outcomes vary considerably amongst the different segments of the society. We note that gender, disability, ethnicity and  identity determine the efficacy of delivery of services. We do note  that poor and marginalized   do have poorer experience and outcomes. Economic crisis has changed the provision of services significantly and the quality and quantities of the services are on a declining trend. Poverty measurements, exclusion and inclusion errors in social protection programs, inequalities in access to services, and declining quality of services, which exacerbate the suffering of the poor and the marginalized segments of the population are focus areas of CEPA.