National Planning Commission (NPC) has urged councils to prioritise child-inclusive programmes in their district development planning to ensure children are not left out in efforts to realize the Malawi 2063 Vision.
NPC director of research and planning Andrew Jamali said this recently in Blantyre when the commission met local councils in the Southern Region to get their input on the Child-Inclusive Development Planning Guide designed to help sectoral planners at district council level to come up with programmes that are child-inclusive.
“For example in the gender sector, they have early childhood development programming, but there are other sectors such as tourism, agriculture, do they have child-inclusive programmes?
“I know that health and education do have, but perhaps they could be much more that could be considered to ensure that our children are included in the socio-economic development programming at council level.
“So, this tool is an outline of the key questions that a planner at sectoral level in the council must focus on when they are coming up with sector-specific programmes targeting our children,” he said.
Ministry of Local Government Deputy Director of Planning and Policy Sylvester Gawamadzi described the Child-Inclusive Development Planning Guide as vital in ensuring children enjoy their rights and freedoms.
“Issues affecting children are complex because we have different categories of children who have different needs and different interests. Some of them, they are vulnerable, marginalized and voiceless. They cannot participate in any discussion.
“They cannot contribute anything, whatever happens to them depends on us, depends on councils and other people,” he said.
Gawamadzi said his ministry’s role is to ensure that all programmes implemented at local council are in line with the Decentralisation Policy.
On his part, Zomba District Council director of planning and development Precious Kamtsitsi said once finalised, the tool will make it easy for the council to involve children in development.
He said: “Children are the most important stakeholders as far as development is concerned. In fact, if things are developed from the infancy, then we are going to have good development of a country and that’s why we are involved.
“We have Malawi 2063 which is talking about development [which says we should be self-reliant], that has to start with the children. That is why it is really important to have the tool which we will use to make sure the children are involved in issues of development.”
The meeting drew participants from government ministries, departments and agencies such as ministries of Local Government, Unity and Culture, Gender, Tourism and the Department of Economic Planning and Development. Other participants came from Unicef and National Statistical Office.
