‘PROSPER PROJECT’ APPLAUDED FOR A GOOD JOB

By Allan Ntana, Sikonge

SIKONGE district council Chairman, Robert Kamoga, has extended his congratulations toward the efforts made by the Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing Foundation (ECLT) by financing the PROSPER Project which is implemented by Winrock International, TAWLAE and TDFT) in Urambo and Sikonge Districts in Tabora region focusing on combating  child labour in tobacco growing districts of Tanzania.

Speaking during the event held at Udongo village in Sikonge districtin Tabora region to mark the ‘World Day Against Child Labour’ on 12 June 2014, Mr. Robert Kamoga said, he felt highly   privileged to have such endeavors to address incidences of child labor in his district and he is very proud of recorded achievements by the project in his district.

He clarified that the project has accelerated efforts to address child labour in the region through prevention and withdrawal of more than 4590 children from hazardous forms of child labor in agriculture and precisely in tobacco growing.

Apart from creating awareness to the entire community on the importance of education to children and on theadverse effects of child labour, Kamoga said the project has also improved social services such as construction of water wells and improvement of learning and teaching
environment through rehabilitation of classrooms, provision of text books, desks and construction of latrines.

Not only that, the project has also provided conditional loans ranging from Tshs100, 000 to Tshs 200, 000 to more than 983 women entrepreneurs aiming at starting or boosting their small businesses as a gear to empower them economically hence enable them to provide their children with school learning materials as well as meeting house hold needs such as food and clothing, he said.

‘The two districts have more than 200 villages, out of these only 20 villages 10 from each district have benefited from the project, it’s my sincere request to PROSPER project and their donor  to extend their help and services to other villages for the betterment of our children’, he said.

As a matter of assuming responsibility, Kamoga said the government should not rely on donors for everything. ‘We should play our part by setting our strategies’, the issue of providing basic social services to our people has to be done by the government, while donors can take
part on big issues only, he added.

PROSPER project director from Winrock, Bahati Nzunda said the project is funded by the ELCT Foundation aiming to protect children aged between 5-17 from child labour involvement in tobacco growing areas, which is implemented in Urambo and Sikonge districts only in Tabora region.

He said the maximum support from government, implementing partners  (TAWLAE and TDFT), community,the tobacco sector itself, and other stakeholders has paved a way for the project to perform successfully.

Christopher Luyenga, Project Community Outreach Coordinator, noted that the project has set to maximize the means of access to education to all vulnerable children from poor families for the targeted areas within the two districts as a strategy  to ‘extend social protection and combat child labour’. He emphasized that the project is aiming at combatting of all forms of child labor as stipulated in the ILO Convention 182.

PROSPER Project’s interventions entirely focus on combatting child labor by providing proper responses such as access to quality education through improvement of the learning and teaching environment and addressing poverty by improving the livelihoods of women and youth.

This project supports the Government at District and National levels so that there is a strong national commitment and all agricultural sectors join efforts against child labour.

According to a public statement on occasion of the World Day Against Child Labour from the ECLT Executive Director, Sonia Velazquez, “ECLT joins in the WDACL 2014 featured theme: ‘Extend Social Protection; Combat Child Labour’ which spells out the critical role of universalization of social protection and the fulfillment of ILO minimum standards of social security in the fight against child labour”.

She said child labour results from various multifaceted factors such as poverty and lack of quality education, that’s why each year the International Labour Organization draws attention to a specific angle of child labour and the policies and actions that can make a difference in eliminating it.

Founded in 2001, ECLT is a global leader in preventing and addressing child labour in tobacco agriculture with the primary purpose of protecting and improving the lives of children and eliminating child labour in tobacco-growing.

ECLT is a partnership between farmers - represented through the International Tobacco Growers’ Association (ITGA) and the major multi-national tobacco companies, advised by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and Save the Children Switzerland, dedicated to protecting children from child labour wherever tobacco is grown.

ECLT has supported key child labour elimination programmes in Tanzania since 2004. Specifically, through the efforts of our implementing partners ILO-IPEC and Winrock International, to build partnerships with local stakeholders, including government, tobacco companies and the tobacco farmers, to implement area based approaches to combat child labour within the Urambo and Sikonge districts of Tanzania, and contribute to the National Action Plan.

 

PROSPER project complements the activities of the local tobacco companies in fighting child labour, their activities include training farmers on the hazards of child labour and other work abuse, monitoring them, helping them increase their yields, researching ways to reduce labour.