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Rural-urban migration irriversable: ’A luta continua’
2006-06-25 09:40:06
By Peter Msungu
In the first place, why do people from rural areas want to move to urban centres? And why is it that urban dwellers would not wish to move to rural suburbs?
The two questions are interesting when discussing about the development of human beings, especially when it comes to acquiring new cultures and or civilization.
Here in Tanzania and elsewhere in developing countries there is ample evidence to suggest that the number of people moving from rural areas to urban centres has tremendously been increasing. There are very good reasons for this.
The foremost important reason is that people who move from rural areas, tend to believe that urban life is sweeter and confortable, even if one does not have a job to sustain his or her life.
It is only in urban centres where one can find a job or engage in some petty businesses, a thing which is next to impossible in the rural areas. Again in urban centres one gets slightly educated even if he doesn’t have to attend school.
In towns you learn by seeing, watching and hearing what other town dwellers say or how they react to different issues.
Unlike in the rural areas, one spends most of his time on the farm tilling land to plant food crops after which he retires back home very tired and exhausted.
The following morning he is back to the farm and undergoes the same routine daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. The exercise is difficult and unbearable. It is for this reason he/she would like to abandon rural life and move to an urban centre for better prospects if any.
But for what we know poverty has been the main cause for people to move from rural areas into urban centres, with the hope of getting jobs .
There are some lucky ones who get jobs but the majority do not and have found themselves leading miserable life in urban centres.
The influx of people from rural settings to urban centres has caused many unplanned cities in some developing countries, Tanzania included.
Once they arrive in towns from their rural dwellings, they start looking for empty spaces to build temporary houses or sometimes permanent ones against the laws of the day.
Many have built houses on water sources, prohibited areas, playing grounds, pavements and what have you. In this way you are creating a problem of unplanned cities.
Living in unplanned cities has its disadvantages, one being that this situation denies them many essential services such as water, electricity etc.
The influx of people to urban centres from rural areas will continue so long as there are no long plans put in place to improve the economic, social and cultural situations in rural areas.
There are practically no formal activities in the rural areas, as those obtaining in urban centres.
In some regions, there is not a single factory or industry which could absorb 50 ex-standard seven or ex-form Four leavers.
What option would these youngsters have other than moving from such areas to urban centres in search of new opportunities? They are still young and ernegetic. They will move into towns whether we like it or not.
In the not too distant past, Iringa district had two or three factories which were providing some jobs to people.
You had the Diamond cutting company, the Coca cola plant and another Asian owned factory. All of them are no longer there for reasons best known to no one.
The existence of these factories meant a lot to school leavers and other residents there. Should Iringa residents and ex-standard seven or Form IV pupils be left to rot in the streets of Iringa, while they could venture for better prospects in other urban centres?
Today we have only mentioned Iringa but there are also other regions in the country which do not have industries and or factories to provide joh opportunities to residents there.
They include Singida, Tabora, and Kigoma, just to mention few. It is a foregone conclusion that many residents from these regions will move to other urban centres where they believe they will be better off not only economically but more importantly, financially.
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