Arusha — Unlicensed Children's Homes have until the end of January 2023 to acquire their operating documents, lest they get expunged from the government's list.
An assistant commissioner of for Community Development, Gender, Women and Special Groups, Baraka Makona, revealed here at the weekend that there were 99 Children's Homes that were being run without licenses in the country.
Mr Mahona threatened that such undocumented homes risk being blacklisted come February next year.
"Only 325 homes have been licensed to so far, while some 99 haven't... we have no choice other than delisting them," he disclosed.
The Assistant Commissioner hinted that the unlicensed Children's could be exposing minors to all sorts of violence such as sexual abuse, forced labor and child trafficking.
Worse enough, those which lack proper documents could still be housing children who don't qualify to be vulnerable, according to Mr Makona.
"This is my appeal to those which aren't licensed to come forth as they are given for free, or else they risk getting shutdown," warned Mr Makona at a forum hosted by the Families and Futures Coalition of Tanzania (FFCT), at the weekend.
Licensing of Children's Home is provided for in the Law of the Child Act of 2009.
Likewise, the Children's Homes (Regulation) Act defines the centers as premises other than an approved school, where five or more children being orphans or children whose relatives or guardians are unable or unwilling to care for them, are received to be cared for and maintained, either gratuitously or for payment, for a period of longer than seven days by a person who is not a relative or guardian of the children.
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According to Mr Makona, around 5,000 children have sought refuge in these safe places.
In the same vein, the assistant commissioner of for Community Development, Gender, Women and Special Groups urged Children centers to make good use of different system rolled out by the government to make their services known.
He said: We have 9,000 NGOs operating in the mainland; however we are yet to see their substantial output.
They the National Integrated Information Management System and the National Vulnerable Children Management Information System.
Earlier on, FFCT coordinator Oggu Nanyaro said the forum brought together different children organizations to share experiences and knowledge of running them.
"Most the organizations weren't adhering to the children's homes regulations and there were a lot of challenges of strengthening families and reuniting the once vulnerable children with their families," he said.
While detailing the Coalition's outcome report, Mr Nanyaro informed the participants that 23.5 per cent of children living in the homes had been reunited with their families.
According to Manyaro, it was FFCT's plan to prevent around 90 per cent of risk children from entering residential homes through family strengthen as the coalition envisions reuniting at least 50 per cent of motherless infants with family members before primary school.
