TANZANIANS HAVE BEEN ADVISED TO USE THEIR TIME EFFICIENTLY PRODUCTIVELY AND PROFITABLY
BY KAANAELI KAALE OF MWANANCHI NEWSPAPER OF DECEMBER 12, 2005
Tanzanians have been advised to learn how to use their time productively and efficiently as a major measure of the implementation of the Strategy for Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction abbreviated in Kiswahili as MKUKUTA.This was advised by the Coordinator of the Project on Country-wide Time Use by Gender and Advanced Analysis of Census Data from The University in the South, Dr. Deogratias M. B. Rugaimukamu at a Workshop held at the Kunduchi Beach Hotel on Saturday, December 10, 2005.
This research on Time Use is conducted by the Department of Statistics of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in collaboration with the Norwegian Historical Data Centre of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Tromso, Norway was conducted in January and February, 2005.
Presenting his paper on the Results of the Research on Time Use as a measure for the strategy to eradicate poverty, Dr. Rugaimukamu said that there is need to sensitize the citizens on the need for efficient budgeting of and use it profitably. He said that people in the rural areas should be encouraged to both tradable food and cash crop production if weather conditions allow. He also said that there should be investment in infrastructure in order to make non-tradable food crops tradable in some areas where communication is generally very difficult or impossible.
Dr. Rugaimukamu also that the most important aspect is the recognition of in time management for economic and social development in order for successful implementation of Strategy for Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction at the household level.
Although it still remains to estimate the average time spent on agricultural activities, in the two zones, the available information suggests that a large number of rural people in the Lake zone comprising of the regions of Kagera, Mara and Mwanza spend most of their time on agricultural activities than that of the rural people in the Southern Highlands constituted by Iringa, Mbeya, Rukwa and Ruvuma regions. Furthermore, from the information on food and cash crop production and producer prices it would seem that rural people in the Southern Highlands Zone would have a lower level of poverty than that of the rural people in the Lake Zone.
Dr. Rugaimukamu advised that based on the results of this research the measurement of poverty should be based on zones rather than the whole country for proper implementation of policies for poverty eradication or reduction.