How cash transfer changed the life of a poor woman

Women living in extreme poverty wait for their turns to receive cash from Tasaf.

PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

She depended on seasonal casual work in farms, earning between Sh5,000 and Sh20,000 per year.

Dar es Salaam. Maua Abdallah Mkumba, 67, a resident of Mpiji Village, Boko Mnemela Ward in Kibaha Rural District, struggled for ten years to make a living after her husband died in 2003.

She depended on seasonal casual work in farms, earning between Sh5,000 and Sh20,000 per year.

Raising her three kids – aged between three and ten years - made life even more miserable for her.

“Going without food was not uncommon,” she told The Citizen in her village last week.

She had no hope for her future.

It reached a point whereby she could not manage to buy school uniforms for two of her three children.

The house she lived in left a lot to be desired.

However, her life is no longer the same, thanks to a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme that is implemented by Tanzania Social Action Fund (Tasaf).

Ms Maua was entered into the CCT programme in 2014.

Through the programme – which targets the most vulnerable poor people – Maua now earns Sh40,000 after every two months, translating into Sh240,000 per year.

With the money, she is able to buy food, send her kids to school and meet other basis needs.

Having spent the first instalment on food, she decided to invest the money – earned in the second batch – on other income generating activities.

“That was how I established a chicken raring project which has brought a lot of new hope in my life,” she said.

Three years since she started receiving the funds, Maua’s chicken rearing business has grown. She is financially independent though Tasaf is closely monitoring her story before striking her name off the list.

“I have renovated my house…I have also managed to purchase a solar energy facility…I am quite comfortable so much that I can buy virtually everything that my kids require at school,” she told The Citizen noting however that she needs additional capital to expand the business further.

Maua is one of thousands of Tanzanian women whose lives have changed since they were enrolled on Tasaf’s cash transfer programme.

The Kibaha District Commissioner, Asumpta Mshama is of the view that the amount offered through CCT was still too little to fast-track the fight against income poverty.

“Most of the cash transferred ends up in buying food. They are not enough to enable beneficiaries to retain for income generating activities,” Mshama said last week during a visit to Tasaf beneficiaries at Mpiji village.

She called for Tasaf to create a revolving fund, which will be borrowed by beneficiaries of CCT in groups to enable them to do big businesses that would make it easy for them to grow their incomes.

According to the 2012 Household Budget Survey, the basic needs poverty (referring to the minimum resources needed for physical wellbeing) declined from 34.4 per cent in 2006, to 28.2 per cent by 2012. This signals that about 12.6 million of Tanzania’s 45 million 2012 population are still poor.

Tasaf director general Ladislaus Mwamanga said about six million people are currently entered into various anti-poverty projects that helped to ease much of the suffering of the poor people.

He is hopeful that lives of most beneficiaries were improving.

Currently, Tasaf is implementing its anti-poverty programmes through three main areas. Apart from CCT, it also offers Temporary Employment to poor so they can work in improving the infrastructure surrounding their communities.

The third project is the Livelihood Enhancement which involves saving and credit services for poor people.