LESOTHO: Cash for kids
JOHANNESBURG, 8 April 2009 (PlusNews) - This month, 5,000 orphans and vulnerable children in three districts of Lesotho will start benefiting from a new government scheme to alleviate the poverty preventing them from going to school, having enough to eat and staying healthy.
About 55 percent of the estimated 180,000 orphaned children in the tiny mountain kingdom, which has the third highest HIV prevalence in the world, have lost one or both parents to the virus.
"It is well known that when people have this disease, the tendency is to be in denial for some time and in the meantime to spend a lot of money going from one traditional healer or doctor to the next," said Limakatso Chisepo, director of the Department of Social Welfare. "By the time they die, family resources are depleted."
Now, help is at hand for children who are "the neediest of the needy" as the government starts rolling out a Child Grants Programme, with funding from the European Commission and technical assistance from UNICEF.
As part of a pilot phase, 1,250 households identified and nominated by their communities will receive their first quarterly payment of 360 maloti (US$38) in April. "The amount [of the grant], though very small, we're convinced does make a difference in the life of a child," Chisepo told IRIN/PlusNews.
Mohemmad Farooq, a UNICEF child protection specialist who helped design the programme, said the grant was not meant to cater for 100 percent of a child's needs.
"There's a fear people may get addicted to social grants and abandon their own struggle," he said. As the programme is eventually expected to reach about 60,000 children, the grant also had to be an amount that the Lesotho government could afford to eventually take over and keep paying.
Farooq said the decision to give cash instead of food parcels or other types of support was based on global experience suggesting that cash grants gave households more flexibility. "Your priority might be medicine or clothes; when people are given in-kind support, they often sell it to get cash for less than its worth."
A pilot cash-transfer scheme run by Christian relief organisation World Vision in 2008, experimented with giving some households food parcels, some an equivalent amount of cash, and a third group a combination of food and cash. Jonathan Moyo, a commodities officer at World Vision, said households that received the combination benefited most.
"The downside of giving cash only is that people spend it on other things like school fees and funerals, and end up going hungry," he said. "You also have to look at the availability of markets in the area and make sure they don't have to spend money on travelling long distances to buy food."
Chisepo admitted that it would be difficult to make sure households actually spent the money on children, but community committees would be set up to monitor the children's well-being and handle complaints.
The committees will also determine which households qualify for the grants. "In this country more than 60 percent of the population is living below the poverty line," said Farooq, "but we can only cover maybe 25 percent of those who qualify, so we had to come up with a mechanism."
In neighbouring South Africa, where monthly child support grants were introduced over 10 years ago, studies have shown that children in poor households who received the grant were more likely to be enrolled in school and have better access to food and healthcare.
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See also: LESOTHO: "We need food"
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Theme(s): (PLUSNEWS) Children, (PLUSNEWS) Food Security, (PLUSNEWS) HIV/AIDS (PlusNews)
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[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] |
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