New childhood policy is good promise for future

Government last week launched the Early Childhood Development (ECD) policy on which it plans to spend at least Shs1.2 trillion in the next five years.

Under the programme, the government will among other things set up at least one ECD centre in very village where early nutritional and welfare issues of children between birth and eight years will be championed.

This policy has been long in coming and should be applauded considering the plight of children especially in the rural areas and among the urban poor.

But is just one among the many grand policies that government has announced and that had great promise but in the end they have either not been realised or have been mismanaged.

The Universal Primary Education (UPE) is one policy that heralded so much and yet has – for one reason or other – left many school children literally uneducated even after going through seven years of school.

We, therefore, hope sufficient thinking has gone through this policy and the money that should meaningfully support the programme shall be available.

Short of this, we will end up wasting resources on building ECD centres in the villages that have nothing to support children beyond the walls and roof. This is what has befallen many of the Health Centre II that were built in every parish but are without medicine or health personnel and many are surrounded by bush.

Anyhow, it is important to note that one of the best ways to promote good early childhood development is to uplift the economic status of the parents of the children. Yes government has invested a lot of time and ideas in creating wealth among the population – from Entandikwa Fund to Bonna Bagagawale and now Operation Wealth Creation – but none has produced the effect that can truly liberate our people from poverty.

Part of the problem perhaps has been that the thrust of the programmes has been to create credit or seed capital for small enterprise which considering the difficult economic conditions has only left the borrowers poorer and indebted.

Operation Wealth Creation has tried to do it different by focusing on agricultural production but because it is being run as a quasi-military-cum-political operation, no wealth has materialised and instead it has only fed into a patronage network that redistributes money among the elite.

We hope, therefore, that the ECD will be managed and promoted better because investing in our children is investing in the future.

The issue: Education.
Our view: Operation Wealth Creation has tried to do it different by focusing on agricultural production but because it is being run as a quasi-military-cum-political operation, no wealth has materialised and instead it has only fed into a patronage network that redistributes money among the elite.