four hours a day on FFW, which should leave them time for working on their farms. The QAP
FFW project proposal sees FFW as a substitute for ganyu, at least in part, and appears to propose
that FFW be undertaken in the rainy season, as at other times of the year. However, the issue of
FFW squeezing out work on fields is raised as an area for monitoring.

 There are significant differences in approach between MASAF and WFP in their programs.
 WFP's FFW projects are seen as providing alternative and more attractive sources of income, in
 particular to ganyu. People do not have to travel long distances to find work and can continue to
 work on their farms. MASAF is more a traditional PWP. where it is intended in the main phase
 of the project that participant arPe pai, a r2ch wg equivalent to the minimum rural wage and are
 expected to do a full day's wnrk.

 The ability to target is an area where PWPs are often said to have advantages. Certainly
 it is easy to target PWPs geographically and Malawi has an information system in FEWS which
 can provided up to date data on which to base this. It is also claimed that PWPs have a self-
 targeting element This is true in theory. Better-off people are unlikely to undertake hard
 physical labour for a relatively low wage However, the level of poverty is so high in Malawi and
 the availability of off-farm employment so relatively low, that even with careful EPA targeting,
 the extent of self-targeting is highly dependent on the wage offered. MASAF offers cash or a
 mixture of cash and food equivalent to the minimum rural wage. Even at this low wage, there
 is far more demand for participation than employment available Workers are employed on a first
 come first served basis. WFP is proposing a cash/food combination equivalent to 130 percent -
 160 percent10 of the minimum rural wage. The demand for these is likely to be even greater.
 Given that it is politically unacceptable to implement a PWP with a wage below the minimum
 rural wage, it is likely that any PWP will attract many more participants than can be employed.
 participants are still likely to be poor, but they may not be the poorest. This means that some
 form of additional informal targeting or rationing must take place. An evaluation of the
 emergency WFP FFW projects has shown that different projects have adopted different
 approaches. Some have operated on a first come first served basis, in others physical
 productivity criteria have been adopted and in others there has been some attempt to include the
 most needy households (Dil, 1996). The problem of community level targeting should be
 recognized and tackled head-on (see Annex F).

 In their proposed QAP, WFP includes a second type of FFW project, which provides
incentives to workers on community based self-help projects, where the community itself is the
prime beneficiary of the project's output. It is proposed that the incentive offered (WFP do not
call this a wage) would be around 20 percent below the minimum rural wage. This should be



 10 It is difficult to state categorically the value of the WFP wage, as the value of the
food component varies according to the time of year and whether the food is an alternative to
ADMARC or free market purchases.


G2