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Awareness campaign on ’Mkukuta’ launched
2005-07-24 07:35:40
By Judica Tarimo, Dodoma
The government yesterday launched a comprehensive and countrywide public education campaign on the second phase of the country’s poverty reduction strategy, widely known as Mkukuta.
The Vice-President, Dr. Ali Mohamed Shein, graced the launching ceremony of the campaign, which outlines practical strategies to disseminate crucial information on Mkukuta down to the grassroots levels. The event was held at Bunge grounds here.
’’The overall agenda is to reduce income and non-income poverty,’’ said the VP, in a speech read on his behalf by the Minister of State in the Vice-President’s Office (responsible for Poverty Alleviation), Edgar Maokola-Majogo.
The second phase comes after the government and stakeholders detected some shortfalls in the implementation of the first and three-year poverty reduction programme.
’’We noticed some problems with the first phase,’’ the minister said. ’’One of the serious problems is ineffective communication between and amongst stakeholders, especially the government and ordinary people,’’ Majogo noted.
Government statistics indicate that there is significant reduction of poverty in the country, but ordinary people, economists and other stakeholders said the situation on the ground is more than worse.
But this time around, according to Majogo, the Mkukuta backed up by an educative campaign, has come up with the approach of monitoring the level of poverty using three indicators—the pace of economic growth and reduction of income poverty. Other indicators are improved common people’s living condition, and good governance and accountability.
’’Since Mkukuta is a five year programme it could produce substantial results compared to the first phase that lasted for three years only,’’ observed Majogo.
Implementation of Mkukuta, the minister said, goes hand in hand with the national poverty reduction strategy-2025 and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The Vice-President’s Office would be co-ordinating the Mkukuta campaign, with key stakeholders actively involved in education, public mobilizing, sensitizing and dissemination of implementation information throughout Tanzania.
Mary Mwingira, Executive Director of the Tanzania Non-Governmental Organizations Association (TANGO) , said time is up for the Tanzanians to change the philosophy of fighting poverty, and start talking of wealth creation instead of poverty reduction.
She told the government to ensure full participation of common people in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the poverty strategies and policies. ’’People must own it…we have to create a sense of ownership in the course of implementation,’’ she said.
A representative of private sector, Hussein Kamote, an official from the Confederation of Tanzanian Industries (CTI), challenged the government to improve the business environment for private sector development and growth.
’’An improved and efficient private sector would stimulate economic growth, create more jobs for more the people and thus reduce the level of poverty,’’ he said.
Ken Neufeld, representative of development partners group, said preparation of the poverty strategy was simple, but the challenge remains on the implementation and involves all people in the process. ’’People want to see the country’s economy is growing up and poverty is reducing,’’ he said.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Acting representative, Patrick Buckely, urged poverty stakeholders to transform the notion of national ownership from rhetoric to reality by increasing popular participation in poverty initiatives.
’’Effective communication is vital in trying to maximize people’s involvement in national development endeavours,’’ he said. ’’Mkukuta’s broader, wider and more inclusive partnerships means communication is important to attain the set targets,’’ he added.
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