National News

Managers, technocrats drilled in early childhood

At least 30 managers and technocrats in various departments of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Welfare have undergone a two-day training in Zomba on Early Childhood Development (ECD) to increase their knowledge on the initiative.

According to the director of child affairs McKnight Kalanda, the workshop was aimed at improving the capacity of government departments in the ministry can deliver ECD services.

The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (Osisa) funded the training.

“We realised that the delivery of ECD services by our ministry was not effective because many people in various departments such as accounts, administration and human resources had little or no skills on how to deal with issues about early childhood,” he said.

Secretary of Gender, Children and Social Welfare’s Mary Shawa said during the opening that ECD services are provided to children until the age of eight to ensure that they become productive citizens.

She, however, bemoaned poor fund allocation to ECD, saying the tendency contributes to Malawi’s continued loss of gifted children to bad behaviours like engaging in violent activities.

“Children that have never gone through proper ECD have low thinking capacity and they do things without thinking about the consequences. As a result, they easily get into conflict with the law,” she said.

Currently although the number of children reached out through the ECD services has increased from 970 000 to 1 540 000 in the country, Malawi is still not doing enough to achieve good points on ECD as 62 percent of children are not benefiting.

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