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Mozambique: Charity Doesn't Help, Says Minister
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
1 December 2007
Posted to the web 3 December 2007
Namaacha
"Charity doesn't help. It doesn't fight poverty, it just perpetuates it", declared Mozambique's Minister of Women's Affairs and Social Welfare, Virgilia Matabele, on Friday.
Speaking to reporters in the southern town of Namaacha, immediately after the end of a meeting of the Consultative Council of her Ministry, Matabele said what was required was to involve needy people in productive activities rather than giving them alms.
In Mozambique's case, the alms take the form of a food subsidy given to destitute people by the National Social Welfare Institute (INAS). Matabele said that the INAS is now removing from the food subsidy programme all those able-bodied people who are capable of useful work: they would be transferred to income generating programmes instead.
Matabele added that providing vulnerable people with professional training is another way of fighting poverty. This would allow the poor to personally take charge of poverty fighting initiatives.
Initially, the food subsidy programme was intended to cover all destitute people. But now, the Minister said, the beneficiaries are being chosen more carefully, so that the programme will only benefit the elderly poor, disabled people, the chronically ill and others who are unable to undertake any form of paid work.
Summarising the activities of INAS over the past year, Matabele said that its work has helped reduce the vulnerability of poor households.
"During this year, we exceeded our targets for implementing the various social programmes among our target groups", she said.
The food subsidy programme target for this year was 97,000 people, and it is in fact reaching 100,000, she said. The target for next year is that it should reach 120,000.
A further concern of INAS is the increasing number of orphaned and vulnerable children in Mozambique, particularly of children who have lost their parents to AIDS. Matabele said that INAS registers these children, and provides them with food and with access to education and health care.
"We have found various means so that these children do not live on their own", she said. "Through direct support, we help children live with their grandparents, who sometimes also have to look after their own children who are sick with AIDS".
As for children begging and living on the streets, Matabele stressed "Street children were not born on the streets. They are our children, and because we didn't pay proper attention to them, they left the house and ended up where we now find them".
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"We are working with several organisations to try and put these children into shelters", she added, although it would always be preferable to place them with other families that could give them a living home.
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| Copyright © 2007 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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