Over 63,000 families on TASAF Kitty ‘unqualified’

The Minister of the State in the President’s Office (Public Service Management and Good Governance), Ms Angela Kairuki

More than 63,816 households in the country have been deregistered from the Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF), a programme established specifically to pull poor families out of abject poverty.

The Minister of the State in the President’s Office (Public Service Management and Good Governance), Ms Angela Kairuki, told the National Assembly here yesterday that such households were proved to “have no qualifications” to receive the TASAF funds.

She disclosed that most of deregistered households were found to come from relatively better-off families, such as businessmen and public servants. The minister pointed out that already 91 coordinators had been taken to task for identifying the wrong households – all the time knowing they weren’t qualified.

“We have directed municipal directors to closely follow up this matter,” the minister said, in response to a supplementary question from George Lubeleje (Mpwapwa- CCM). The MP had pointed out that some of the “identified families” had been removed from TASAF programme even though they were still living in abject poverty.
The lawmaker, therefore, wanted to know who was to blame for the mix-up. In the basic question, Khalifa Mohamed Issa (Mtambwe-CUF), explained that Phase III TASAF initiative was being implemented to assist families living in abject poverty to meet costs of food, education, health and good feeding for children.
He, therefore, sought to know if the government would consider increasing the minimum limit of funding in the face of increased commodity prices and the rising cost of living; he also wanted to know the criteria used to identify needy families.
The minister pointed out that the initiative, initially to run for ten years, was now being implemented in two phases of five years each from 2013 to 2023 – aimed at enabling such families to improve revenue and economic opportunities.
She said that the beneficiaries would receive “a subsidy” good enough to enable it meet the essential needs, while continuing to improve its economic standards and implementing entrepreneur projects. In response, he owned up that the subsidy had since been increased after a thorough review of the reality on the ground.
But the minister was quick to point out that such increase was to enable these families engage in gainful businesses, not to rely entirely on subsidy as means of subsistence.