Gwanda to revive Child Protection Committees

09 Aug, 2015 - 00:08 0 Views

The Sunday News

GWANDA District is working on resuscitating Child Protection Committees (CPCs) at ward level as it intensifies efforts to help improve child care and protection of children’s rights in the district.

In Zimbabwe, it is a requirement for these structures meant to support and protect children’s rights to be active and be found at all levels from village up to national level.

However, in most parts of Gwanda District these child protection structures have been inactive.

Plans to resuscitate the CPCs were revealed at a Gwanda district child protection stakeholders meeting in the town recently amid indications that child protection systems needed to be strengthened.

The district social welfare officer Mr Alex Zinyoro said there was a need for the district to revive the ward CPCs as they were crucial for safeguarding child protection issues and other related concerns.

“CPCs are one of the most central structures which have been identified in child protection because they are nearest to the child who might face abuse or other unmet needs. This structure is a technical structure which is supposed to provide 24-hour protection to the child so if it is functional at ward level it will mean our children will be better protected right from ward level.

“Gwanda has 34 wards, both rural and urban, which means if all things are equal we must have 34 ward level CPCs,” he said.

CPCs are structures made up of Government and non government organisations (NGOs) to provide services to vulnerable children in the communities.

The meeting heard that efforts were made to resuscitate the CPCs in other wards also with help from some NGOs.

“The role of these contingents is to make services available to the vulnerable children and these services may be in the form of education, medical care and other things. They are there to promote children’s rights in the community,” Mr Zinyoro said.

He said in some areas where the CPCs were in existence, there seemed to be a challenge in that members were not aware of the roles they should play.

The main members of the ward CPCs include headmen, village heads, councillors, teachers, businesspeople, child representatives and faith-based organisations.

Mr Zinyoro said in the process of resuscitating CPCs, they would at the same time form or resuscitate CPCs comprising children only.

“We also need to have CPCs purely led by children themselves,” he said.

An officer from the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education said some school-based CPCs had been established.

 

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