AfricaPress-Tanzania: ABOUT 10 civil society organisations (CSOs) in the country have pledged to help intensify public awareness on the fight against the deadly Covid-19 disease and donated 79m/- for the cause.
Foundation for Civil Society (FCS) President Stigma Tenga said the amount was handed over to Prime Minister Kassim Mjaliwa in support of the government to control the disease in the country.
She explained that CSOs had always been promoting development, thus they were ready to support the struggle against coronavirus, a disease that derailed development and people’s wellbeing.
“The major focus of CSOs is to support the government in its development agenda and coronavirus is a thorny issue because it affects all sectors of the economy,” she said, adding that the CSOs promised the Premier that they would intensify public awareness on the disease.
She said CSOs had a big role to educate members of the public on the deadly disease, noting that there was a need for more efforts since the disease was very dangerous.
According to the FCS boss, the CSOs will continue engaging people to understand the problem, saying the government cannot do it all alone without support from other stakeholders.
She noted that as people advocates, especially marginalised groups in society, they had appealed to the Prime Minister to ensure the government gave special attention to special groups like women, children and the disabled during this trying moment.
For her part, Tanzania Women Lawyers Association (TAWLA) Executive Director Tike Mwambipile noted that as CSOs, they understood that Covid-19 had grossly affected the world and appealed to the government to consider reducing taxes, levies and rents.
“It is a fact that the pandemic has affected the whole world and it is our role to ensure that women and children get best services during this time. It is women who are mostly affected as their incomes go down,” she said.
She called on the government to empower women, reach those affected by the disease whose incomes had gone down or lost what they had because of the disease.
“We appeal to the government to keenly look at taxes, especially rents since people’s incomes have been affected by the disease,” she said, adding that women and children should be considered more.
“As key players and partners in development, we have decided to support the government to tackle the pandemic and we are looking at how best we can do this to help save lives,” said Legal Services Facility (LSF) Chief Executive Officer Lulu Ng’wanakilala.
