TANZANIA : PRESIDENT Samia Suluhu Hassan has called upon parents and guardians across the country to take their children to schools as the government has been consistently improving learning infrastructure for quality education delivery.
She made the statement on Sunday in her long day visit both at Masasi District in Mtwara and Liwale District, Lindi Region.
Dr Samia said many children have been dropping out from their school due to misguidance from parents and guardians’ who expose them to parental responsibilities that culminate in to early marriages, pregnancies and moral decay.
“I would like to express my dismay caused by parents and guardians who are not taking their children to school regardless of the government efforts of building schools and introduction of fee free education,”
Adding “Let both your daughters and sons go to schools” she said.
She said there has been a challenge of parents to hide or assign jobs their children after completing their Standard Seven Class and pass their exams to join Form One thus causing the government to spend time searching them to report for their Secondary School’s studies.
On good children upbringing and observance of cultural values, Dr Samia said parents should avoid initiation ceremonies that allure children to marital responsibilities especially during harvest seasons.
“The issues of involving girls in initiation ceremony and let them go during their teenage should be stopped, this hampers girls welfare, instead they should be exposed to parental responsibilities at adulthood” she said.
Moreover, Dr Samia urged citizens to utilize properly their income after harvesting time apart from spending much on initiation ceremonies that trigger forced marriage, pregnancies as well as failure of girls’ school dropout.
She said the government will add more employees to increase efficiency in the health and education sector.
Furthermore, Dr Samia said the government will keep on creating employment opportunities to youths through the Building a Better Tomorrow (BBT) programme by establishing relevant agro projects in the country for example a bee keeping farm in Liwale District.
The BBT focus on catalysing realization of the Agenda 10/30 that increasing youth inclusion in farming and obtaining the growth rate of the agricultural sector by ten per cent by 2030.
The Programme is designed to inspire youth to engage in sustainable and profitable projects through crop production, livestock keeping and fisheries, empowering them through training, mentoring and coaching, youth engagement in profitable and sustainable agribusiness management and to enable youth led enterprises by improving their business environments.
Additionally, he called upon citizens to protect their environment by planting more trees and avoid deforestation in a bid to curb climate change effects.
Recently, Dr Samia Suluhu Hassan was appointed by the United Nations (UN) to serve as a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Centre on Adaptation (GCA), a vital world’s body that foster climate resiliency for human wellbeing.
She joined others member of the board including the President of Senegal, Mr Macky Sall , Chairperson of the African Union’s (AU) Commission, Mr Moussa Faki Mahamat, President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Mr Akinumwi Adesina and International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Managing Director, Ms Kristalina Georgieva.
