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Let us mark Easter caring for the poor
2007-04-09 08:49:08
By Editor
Tanzanians and the rest of the international community will have this Easter season wonderfully spent if they use it partly to reflect on the plight of the billions of people in different parts of the world languishing in abject poverty and the untold misery that means.
It would be a million times better if they use the opportunity to search their souls, do whatever is possible and give whatever they can to ease the pervasive wretchedness in the world that so strangely coexists with confounding degrees of affluence.
We feel we cannot speak as much about the intervention the outside world could chip in with as we think we should say about how we believe Tanzanians can and ought to contribute to efforts to pull the sting of despondency and grief out of the lives of the millions of our people who make do with less than 1,000/- a day.
It would be neither fair nor correct to discount suggestions that huge numbers of comprehensive academic and professional studies have been made on the causes and effects of mass poverty, some of the research work being by development experts of international repute.
It would likewise be the height of cynicism not to appreciate the positive impact of the official and non-official as well as formal and non - formal measures taken over the years to make the lives of our people increasingly better.
But considering the massive financial and other assistance that all manner of local and international institutions and other donors have been extending to our country specifically to enhance its capacity to tackle poverty, one is tempted to believe that the impact should have been much greater.
In like manner, Tanzania is blessed with so many governmental and non-governmental organisations both local and international with the thrust of their activities officially on alleviating poverty that one is baffled seeing poverty still wreaking as much havoc on our people as ever before.
A 2000 booklet entitled `Directory of Sources of Support to the Poor in Tanzania` published by the Vice President's Office with support from the United Nations Development Programme showed that the country had over 800 organisations, associations, societies, agencies and various other institutions officially set up to help free needy Tanzanians from the shame of grinding poverty.
There was quantifiable evidence that many of these institutions had lived up to popular expectation, and they included big and small names alike such as Tanzania Social Action Trust Fund, World Vision Tanzania, Lions Clubs, Dogodogo Centre, Girls` Secondary School Education Support Programme, GOIG (Getting Old is Growing), and a string of others caring for AIDS victims - not to forget the government and its various agencies.
Yet the war against poverty is far from being won, and there are pockets of poverty where things are worsening.
There is therefore an urgent need for all players to put their heads together as frequently and regularly as appropriate and agree on better ways to advance. Miracles can still happen.
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