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Pamenus Tuso
Gift Ncube (not his real name) of Tshalimbe Village in Umzingwane’s Ward 8 district in Matabeleland South Province was abandoned by his mother whilst he was still a toddler.
The mother left him in the custody of his 70-year-old grandmother before going to South Africa presumably in search of employment.
Since her disappearance almost 16 years ago, life has not been easy for Gift and his grandmother. The grandmother is a widow and does not have any form of income to cater for the daily needs of the disabled boy such as school fees and food.
“I was touched by the plight of Gift when I visited him as part of my voluntary role as a community child protection worker. The boy who has a physical disability spent the whole day at the homestead without going to school. He did not have any food to eat as well,” said Mhlupeki Ndlovu, a child community care worker (CCW) in the area.
Ndlovu said after learning about Gift’s predicament, he took him to the Department of Social Welfare offices where he was assisted. He is part of the community child protection volunteers who have been trained by an international children’s rights non-governmental organisation, Save the Children in various districts to identify and report statutory child protection cases.
Under the National Case Management System, a programme within the national action plan for orphans and vulnerable children, Save the Children was commissioned by Unicef and the Government of Zimbabwe to train the community child workers and protection focusing on topics that will enable them to identify abuse in communities and to report the cases.
The programme which is led by the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare aims to provide for better protection for vulnerable children in communities in the country.
“It has been realised that in communities, there are a lot of potentially abuse cases happening. However, reporting of these cases has been very limited with welfare cases such as children in need of education assistance or birth registration being the cases that have been reported. Upon the realisation of potentially high incidence of child abuses in communities ,Save the Children was commissioned by Unicef and the Government of Zimbabwe to train community child workers and child protection,” said Gloria Nyahuma, Save the Children programmes manager (child protection and child rights governance) in an interview with The Chronicle.
Nyahuma said her organisation works with community child workers at grassroots level together with lead child workers in all the districts where the organisation operates.
“We have community child workers at grassroots level together with lead child workers. They meet on a monthly basis and they have meetings within their wards. The lead community child workers consolidates their monthly reports which they forward to the Department of Social Welfare at district level where the cases are processed,’’ explained Nyahuma.
The training programme is being done in Bulawayo, Umzingwane, Mutasa, Beitbridge, Zvimba, Bulilima, Mangwe, Makoni, Rushinga, Shurugwi, Mwenezi and Harare Central among other districts.
Nyahuma said within the National Case Management System, Save the Children also works together with other agencies who are part of the Child Protection Fund.
Some of the organisations which Save the Children works with in the implementation of the programme include Justice for Children and Childline.
“We work with various other stakeholders who include Justice for Children and Childline which handles different cases through their 1169 hotline. At district level, we work hand in glove with World Education which has got the mandate of building the capacity of district social welfare officers,” she said.
The social welfare probation officer for Umzingwane district, Daniel Khanye, said the role of the department in the programme is to assess and take up reported cases.
“We also refer to specialist organisations like the police, ministries of Education and Health depending on cases that would have been identified by CCWs on the ground,” said Khanye.
While the probation officer described the programme as successful in the area in alleviating child abuse cases, he said more can be still done to equip CCWs with adequate resources so as to timeously and effectively report child molestation cases.
“There are some cases like those of sexually abused children which are reported very late. So, we want our CCWs to be provided with everything that will help them to identify the cases so that the children are also given services easily. Otherwise the programme has been a success because the CCWs are now able to identify cases. For example, there are some cases which they considered normal but following their trainings they are now seeing their abnormalities,” said Khanye.
A lead CCW worker in Phindi- Gande village, Alice Dube hailed Save the Children for training her and other CCWs.
“I have been trained on how to report and investigate cases of child abuse. There were a lot of child abuse cases happening in this area. One of the major cases of child abuse happening here is neglect of children by parents. Most parents are not willing to pay schools fees for their children yet some of them have the means to do so,” said Dube who is also a councillor.
Dube said the CCWs’s work was being affected by lack of adequate resources.
Her concerns were echoed by Nyahuma.
“We have challenges in resource constraints. We train child care workers but the resources to follow up to provide mentoring and support is very scarce. So once we train them , it becomes difficult for them to be able to continuous apply the learning from the trainings because once we train them , we want to mentor them.
“We want to coach them to be able to continuously provide services but this is a challenge we are facing on the side of the child care workers. They have also resource constraints in that they must travel for long distances. The also use their personal funds because the bicycles they were given have broken down,” she said.
Nyahuma also cited child neglect as one of the major challenges facing children in most communities.
“From the feedback from the communities, one of the main issues that the children are facing is neglect and it has been pointed out that young parents are the ones neglecting their children which is an indication that in communities especially the young parents need to be capacitated on parenting so that they are able to care for their children. We have also received issues to do with children engaging in unsafe migration to South Africa without proper documentation,” said Nyahuma.
Apart from neglect, Nyahuma also cited drug abuse as another major problem.
“I have just received a surprising issue of children as young as 11 and 12 years old engaging in drug abuse. It is an area we had not thought of in our area of programming but we have realised that we have children who are engaging in drug abuse. Engagement with their parents and other adults within the community has proved that there are low levels of knowledge on the dangers of drug abuse. The case management cadres are not taken seriously when they try to communicate with parents of affected children,” she said.
Nyahuma expressed concern over some traditional leaders whom she said are not taking seriously issues to do with child protection.
“I have been just informed that there are some communities where allegations have been raised that alleged child abusers seems to be paying through livestock so that some of these cases are dismissed or not taken further. We need to invest more on community leadership. It is something which we have not really done. Community leaders need to understand child protection and why we need to protect our boys and girls in communities,” she added. Violence and abuse of children is on the increase with 60 percent of reported rape survivors being children and the majority being girls.
One in eight girls is reportedly being sexually harassed at school and 22 percent of children reportedly being abused by care givers. Communities remain a crucial source of potential support since it includes friends , neighbours , traditional leaders , elders , teachers , youth groups and religious leaders who can provide care to vulnerable children.
Online Reporter