Households‘ Perception Towards Covid-19 And Its Effects On Their Livelihoods During Peak Period: The Case Of Burayu Town, Shager City, Oromia Regional Government State, Ethiopia

Abstract

This paper investigates the perception of urban households towards COVID-19 and its impact on livelihoods. The study was conducted in two urban communities of Burayu town administration, Sheger City of Oromia Regional State. Exploratory type of research design with mixed quantitative and qualitative methods was applied. The qualitative data were collected from 155 respondents through a household survey. The qualitative data collected from six focus group discussions and eight key informants comprising head of households and experts from government offices. Descriptive and inferential analyses were executed on the quantitative data and themes from qualitative data were used to substantiate the descriptive data. Findings of the study show that urban households demonstrated low and shallow perception in the areas like key symptoms, mode of transmission and prevention strategies of COVID-19. Except for educational level, the selected demographic characteristics of the respondents had no statistical significance for perception. COVID-19 had a mild impact on the aggregate health conditions of the respondents. However, the pandemic predominantly imposed high levels of psychological distress. COVID-19, during its critical seasons, extremely impacted the socio-economic conditions of households in the study area. Among others, temporary work and individualized incomegenerating businesses were severely affected. Secondly, the pandemic affected paid work in private and government sectors. Remittances and pensions were the least affected source of households’ livelihoods. Inaccessibility to livelihood inputs, loss of jobs, reduction of workers and working hours, leaving businesses, reduction in salary, lack of market places, and reduced demands for goods are the major sources of income exacerbated by the pandemic. Reducing consumption of goods followed by using emergency savings was the most common coping strategy used by households during the peak. Additional emergency support received from the government, selling assets, reducing demands for goods and limiting working hours were also regarded as other forms of copying strategies. Lack of loan or financial services, inadequate emergency assistance and lack of social services during the shock were identified. It is concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic has left devastating effects on health, livelihoods and the world of work. The economic and social disruption caused by the pandemic has exacerbated steady poverty. It is recommended that policy makers, implementers and mandated government bodies should have responsive policy, strategies and systems in place that would help provide responsive support, safeguarding and recovery of vulnerable households during the outbreak of any potential pandemic.