THE Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF) banks on different interventions, including the Productive Social Safety Net (PSSN), to address poverty in the country.
TASAF executive Director Ladislaus Mwamanga said this as he revealed that at least 70 per cent of the beneficiaries had been reached in the second term of the third phase.
“The second term programme started with the identification of the targeted households, whereby our target is to reach 1,450,000 households which account for more than 7 million people in mainland Tanzania Mainland and the Isles,” explained Mr Mwamanga, at a workshop held here recently.
For his part, Hai District Commissioner Juma Irando urged participants of the workshop to exhibit professionalism in helping the government to address poverty in the country.
“As you are all aware, our government is keen on fighting poverty, you’ve therefore been entrusted to work with TASAF to make the government realizes this goal,” he said.
He equally challenged the participants to identify individuals who deserve the Safety Nets, and shun any sort of favoritism.
In the last 15 years, the government through TASAF has supported the poor communities and households in building capacities at grass root level to enable them manage the transformation initiatives in improving social services for sustained development.
Since the inception of its first phase, the PSSN project has reached out to 70 percent of all households in Tanzania.
TASAF was established in 2000 as part of the Government of Tanzania’s strategy to reduce poverty.
Phase I (2000-2005) focused on improving social service delivery; capacity enhancement for communities, including overseeing 1,704 community-run sub-projects such as construction and rehabilitation of health care facilities, schools and other small-scale infrastructure; and a Public Works Program (PWP) component with 113,646 direct beneficiaries.