Dodoma — THE MINISTRY of Community Development, Gender, Women, and Special Groups has advised the Police Gender and Children Desk to improve customer care for impressing citizens to report gender-based violence incidents.
The advice was issued in Dodoma over the weekend during stakeholders meeting whose objective was to implement the National Plan of Action to end Violence against Women and Children (NPA-VAWC) widely known in Swahili as MTAKUWWA.
Minister for the docket, Dr Dorothy Gwajima, said the purpose of the meeting was to accelerate the implementation of an intervention to end violence against women and children.
She hinted that some victims feared approaching the desks which are located within the Police compounds.
Dr Gwajima revealed that number of Gender and Children Desks have been set up within Police Stations in the country whereas by December 2021 there were a total of 423 desks in various Police Stations; however, some of them were having poor customer care, something which makes people refrain from reporting such incidents.
Dr Gwajima expressed that some desks treated victims like criminals, which dwindled the number of people to report the incidents.
“We commend the good job done by these desks, but some officers in charge of these desks should be equipped with customer care philosophy, that could help the victims to feel free to express themselves,” she expressed.
She added that by December 2021in colleges and higher learning institutions a total of six gender desks have been set up, still many colleges do not have such desks.
“The gender violence is rampant in high education, so we encourage that the desks should be established there to fight all gender-based violence,” she commented.
On her side, the permanent secretary of the Ministry, Dr Zainabu Chaula, questioned the diligence of the Non-Governmental Organization in fulfilling their role.
Dr Chaula noted that Tanzania has more than 12,000 NGOs but still there were social problems that accelerated gender-based violence in society.
“The output of any NGO should be measured by problems it solved, when you do a good job people will recognize your organization, at the Mfugale flyover there are hundreds of children with no shelters, where are those NGOs? she questioned.
Mp Neema Lugangira (NGO) advised the MTAKUWWA stakeholders also to shift focus to gender-based violence which is very rampant in the internet ecosphere.
“Cyber bullying is common there; we have to intervene because people including women and children are severely intimidated that is unhealthy, we have to stop it too.” Expressed.
Speaking on behalf of the stakeholders, Plan International Director of Program Peter Mwakabwale said the stakeholders (NGOs) are committed to collaborating with the government of all levels to continue implementing different interventions to ensure gender-based violence is eliminated.
He hinted that the issue of gender-based violence is extremely immense, so he advised available NGOs to join muscle to help government efforts to eradicate the problem to create peace and harmony among women and children.
MTAKUWWA aims to eradicate violence against women and children by 50% by June 2022. To achieve this, the Government in collaboration with development partners has been implementing various interventions aimed at eradicating violence against women and children.