AfricaPress-Tanzania: A TOTAL of 68,915 poor households, consisting of poor families in Kagera region benefited from 53.721bn/- disbursed during the third phase of the Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF-Phase III), it has been disclosed.
Kagera Regional TASAF Co-ordinator, Efrazi Mkama said about 70,346 poor households were initially targeted but 1,431 were dropped due to various reasons, including death while others lacked qualifications.
“During the past five-year period, the government allocated a total of 54.32bn/- but the amount paid to the beneficiaries was 53.72bn/-. A total of 600.8ml/- was refunded to the government,” he said.
Mr Mkama appealed to families which benefit from TASAF alms to use them wisely to improve their livelihoods. He also urged the beneficiaries to be creative in coming up with small projects that would boost family incomes.
Mr Mkama further called upon the community to take advantage of the funds issued by the government, donors and various financial institutions, so that the money could bring impact in their lives.
He spoke on the importance of coming up with small scale projects like pigs and goats rearing to improve their incomes.
He also asked the community to abandon outdated traditional practices by giving women the chance of owning various assets and other investments, saying that the group has proved to be competent in financial management.
He said Tasaf beneficiaries have been using the funds to improve their standards of life through construction of decent houses while others have been initiating income generating projects.
Proving the case, the Tasaf official said in the past five years at least 13,621 houses were constructed while 25,956 households were running some income generating activities such as cattle, goats and pigs rearing while others engaged in poultry projects.
He further said about 37,759 households out of 50,179 were also registered with the Community Health Fund (CHF), a 75.2 per cent coverage.
About 1,069 poor households in Ngara District were paid a total of 1.20bn/- for participating in Public Work Programme (PWP) including tree planting, road construction and water sector.
Some of the beneficiaries including widows formed saving groups (Vikoba) with authorities equipping them with entrepreneurship skills to enable them manage well the funds and eventually graduate from poverty, he remarked.
