Ministry Bemoans Lack of Funding

By: Eric Nantchengwa

The Ministry of Gender Disability Children and Social Welfare have decried inadequate funding towards Early Childhood Development-ECD’s which is currently at 0.007 percent far from the benchmark of three percent

This was revealed during a one-day meeting organized by the gender ministry in Lilongwe where stakeholders were engaged in sharing experiences on promoting early childhood development.

After the meeting, it was revealed that lack of funding is crippling the functions of the program which has resulted into depriving the right of Education to children.

National coordinator for Integrated Early Childhood Development Francis Chalamanda appealed to the government to allocate more funds to the program so as to benefit a lot of children.

”We need government to pump in more funding for this project so that it should realize good results otherwise we are going nowhere, the other issue is that government should train more caregivers to perfect the program” he said.

Other amenities lacking in order to support the program are materials to help the children develop physically and holistically.

Reacting to poor funding towards ECD’s Executive Director for Civil Society Education Coalition-CSEC Benedicto Kondowe said it is very pathetic that the program lacks funding.

He said the program has only managed to scoop 40 percent against its targeted 65 percent by 2017 in its enrollment.
Kondowe expressed discomfort that some ECD’s in rural areas are grass thatched and many caregivers are not motivated and are under qualified.

”Some of these caregivers are under qualified and are standard three drop-outs so how do you expect them to deliver?” queried Kondowe.

Kondowe is of the view that the ECD’s should be re-positioned to Education Ministry for better results.