BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) countries have suffered significantly as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic, with at least 50 per cent of households not being able to recover the income levels before the pandemic that has also seriously affected education, health, among other sectors.

A survey released by the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) yesterday analysed the current state of the region in six crucial areas; namely, labour markets, income and food security, education, gender, health, digital, and finance.

The survey found that, while the employment situation had started to show signs of recovery, the jobs were mainly generated by micro companies and those engaged in self-employment.

“There has been a huge unemployment as a consequence [of the pandemic], and one in every four persons across the region has not been [able] to get their jobs back,” said Luis Felipe López-Calva, regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, UNDP, adding that Colombia, Panama, Honduras, and Haiti had been the most severely affected countries in the LAC.

He said women more than men had been more affected by the situation, particularly mothers of very small children and people “in vulnerable ages…and those with lower levels of schooling…

“There is still a long way to recover….[and] the quality of employment has degraded across the region in all countries… it has deteriorated significantly, ”said López-Calva.

He said that the survey had shown that the formal employment “has diminished almost by five per cent region-wide [and]…we see people had to resort to self-employment.

According to the data, 50 per cent of households have not been able to recover income levels before the pandemic whether through the labour market or even remittances and emergency transfers, leading to a situation of food security in the region.

The data showed that all countries had recorded a drop in access to food and that the countries that were already facing poverty levels before the pandemic “are the ones suffering the most”.

In the field of education, while countries such as Guyana and Belize had recorded 12 percentage points higher before the pandemic, other countries were now recording as high as 22 per cent of children not being able to attend classes.

“This is one of the big challenges of the pandemic,” said the panellists during a webinar yesterday when the results of the survey were released, with the data showing that virtual learning in some countries was so bad due to the lack of access to the Internet, available technology, and even children not wanting to participate in the new environment.

World Bank Vice-President for Latin America and Caribbean Carlos Felipe Jaramillo described as “silent crisis” the events brought about by the pandemic in the field of education, especially for primary and secondary education.

“Schools have been mostly closed. In some countries they have not reopened yet, at least not totally, and I think that is something that we said is that the alternatives that have been used are far from ideal.

“I think some countries have used education through the Internet, some countries have used more traditional mechanism,s such as education through TV and the radio, but the effectiveness of these alternatives is not very positive…and we are worried that there is not a system good enough so that most students can truly have an effective educational experience.

The World Bank officials said: “This is going to leave a very deep scar on this generation, and we have to think about how countries can deal with what they have lost in terms of two years of learning. Two years of silent crisis in education.”