Child poverty is national disgrace

The country’s statistics watchdog has revealed that seven out of 10 children in Tanzania are living in poverty. In other words, it is scandalous to say the least, that 70 per cent of our future leaders are lingering in poverty.

A child in Tanzania is defined as living in poverty if he or she suffers deprivation in key dimensions including access to nutrition, health, protection, education, information, sanitation, water and housing.

Poverty from nutrition. Children who are malnourished just because they have missed proper diet could lead this nation to prosperity when they are grown up? This is pure joke.

According to the latest national census of 2012, there are 24 million children under 18 in the country, and given the NBS’ 70 per cent rate, 18 million of them are living in poverty.

The survey using National Panel Survey (NPS) data involving 5,010 households, including 3,947 of them having a total of 11,843 children was carried out across the country in three phases in five years beginning 2008.

In its survey, the NBS examined child poverty in the country not only in monetary basis, but dug deeper to other parameters such as nutrition, sanitation, education, water, health, housing, protection and access to information.

The findings of the research titled Child Poverty in Tanzania, 2016 shows that 26 per cent of the children in the country are coming from poor households, and they are as well deprived of other basic needs like health, education and sanitation, a situation the survey calls ‘multidimensional poverty’.

It also indicates that there are 48 per cent of children in the country who are living in families that do not experience monetary poverty, but whose children suffer from ‘multidimensional poverty’.

The study was supported by the European Union (EU) that released a grant of Euros10m to NBS, while other participants included UNICEF and the World Bank.

We wonder why our children are hit by poverty while they are surrounded by abundant resources that may pull them out of the quagmire of poverty.

An observation by the NBS Director General, Dr Albina Chuwa, should be seriously reflected if we want to end the poverty menace among children.

She says there are parents, especially women in parts of Kilimanjaro region who earn enough from cultivation of cash crops but do not pay attention to their children’s welfare. They would leave their children to starve at home when they go for farming in the morning, and end up in bars on their return from work in the evening, sparing neither food nor time for the kids.

A story by a UNICEF officer in recent years goes that a mother in one of the northern regions beat his son so brutally after he had boiled a chicken egg m,eant for sale to eat. The boy was later diagnosed to have suffered malnutrition.

The chief of education for UNICEF in Tanzania, Cecilia Baldeh, suggests that Tanzania should invest in children in order to realize its mission of attaining a middle class income level by 2025.

Indeed, without a healthy and skilled workforce to drive the economy, this mission would be impossible to attain.

It goes without saying that children experiencing poverty will often be disadvantaged and unable to reach their full potential later in life.

We concur with the NBS that it is important to invest early in children and with equity to develop a skilled and healthy workforce in Tanzania. This is the key for the country to achieve its vision of pushing it to a middle class level.