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Yes, Makete orphans need our total support
2005-08-10 07:47:44
By Deogratias Mushi
On Monday this week, a famous Channel 10 television weekly program, Jenerali on Monday, carried a petulant – sympathetic schema that touched many viewers.
It recounted how orphans (most of them below age of seven), whose parents died of HIV/AIDS earn their living after relatives abandoned them.
The program showed how the little children go as far as collecting bricks on pay. Their employer was shown to be a boy of 16 years.
Two Dar es Salaam based journalists, namely Mgaya Kingoba of Habari Corporation and Bahati Ndetele of Channel 10 TV station, who visited the district recently, gave some shocking news, saying that a teacher who was volunteering to teach the orphans was being paid 5,000/- a month.
They managed to visit two villages out of 92, which are currently affected, by child labour and HIV/Aids.
One of the teachers interviewed during the program said that she had decided to teach the children just to give them parental care they are missing due to the loss of their parents.
’The number of orphans has been increasing each passing day, and the situation is getting worse,’ she noted.
The destructive effects of HIV/AIDS in Makete district are snowballing, with the number of orphans shooting up, a huge loss of manpower to produce food, and the number of children-led households is on the rise.
Currently, the district is home to 13,864 children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, and 6,889 children most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS because they live with old and poverty-stricken grandparents, who can hardly provide for their living.
The District’s Multi-Sectoral District Aids Coordinator, Martin Gowele, was once quoted saying that available statistics indicate that 45 per cent of Makete’s population had been infected with HIV.
During the program it was also asserted that half of the children in Makete district have lost either one or both parents due to HIV/AIDS.
You can easily find places with no adults left at all - only child-headed households or houses full of children being looked after by some elderly grandmother.
Often they return home, raped and infected.
In order to combat the situation, two fundamental ’capacities’ have to be there in order to provide a minimum caring ’safety net’ for children made vulnerable by HIV/Aids.
A child ’minding’ system (persons or institutions) that identifies and monitors children’s vulnerability and that tries to ensure that they are cared for, sent to school for example.
A ’response capacity’ that can be called upon to meet the special needs of the child when the capacity of the minders or fostering parents is not sufficient.
Some children have remained in the care of their grandparents, who are poor and less energetic hence they are regarded as worthless in terms of labour.
But the most shocking aspect is that in both cases children have to drop out of school to enter the labour market for the sake of taking care of their young siblings.
Tanzania Home Economics Association (TAHEA), Iringa region, has been supporting orphans in terms of school fees and study material, through various programmes including the use of renowned volunteers known as Mama Mkubwa in Makete.
TAHEA has shown the way and it is now the responsibility of all organizations involved in this war to adopt a similar method to fight child labour at source.
The TV program primary aim was to raise money to help the poor children, but unfortunately, viewers did not respond positively, and only few called and promised to help.
Better organizational plans should be put in place, because, I believe that people are willing to contribute when they are properly educated on the current problem.
If people in urban areas can contribute millions for a wedding which lasts for few hours only, can’t they contribute more for a just cause like famine or other type of calamity?
Such problems exist not only in Makete district, but in other parts of the country, and they need proper planning for implementation before the situation turns worse like what we see happening in Niger.
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