Liquidity challenges facing Zimbabwe is negatively affecting children’s grants; Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Petronella Kagonye has revealed. Liquidity refers to how quickly one can access the cash that he/she owns.
The Social Welfare Ministry offers grants to children as an effort to improve the living standards of people in the country.
“My Ministry has been assisting children by providing grants. However, due due liquidity challenges timing of these grants has been affected.” the newly appointed Kagonye said.
In 2011 the Ministry of Labour and Social Services launched a national scale cash grant program to benefit at least 25,000 children from access to quality child protection services according to UNICEF‘s website.
Economic challenges which include liquidity challenges have been negatively affecting children as over 400 girls some aged 14 were caught involved in sex work for a living in Harare.
A parliamentarian, James Maridadi stated that the child sex workers of foreign descent.
“When you look at vanhu veku Caledonia (people from Caledonia), they come from Tafara, Mabvuku… they are of foreign descent and they don’t have extended families,” said Maridadi.
Zimbabwe’s culture of extended families has made it possible for orphans to get new guardians as relatives take care of the surviving children, something that’s not common for most children of foreign descent.
Liquidity has been causing problems for Zimbabwe as queues on banks have become a permanent feature in the Central Business Districts around the country’s urban areas.
An adviser to the government Professor Ashok Chakravarti suggested the adoption of the South African Rand as the currency of use in Zimbabwe stating that the use of the United States Dollar was a dead end since there were bad relations with the producing nation.
Chakravarti’s suggestion was rejected by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe stating that the Rand adoption is not necessary as it will lead to speculative tendencies, fuel inflation or price hikes and hinder export viability and also that the move will erode the economic gains in the country.
Liquidity challenges have been tormenting Zimbabwe since 2009, after the introduction of the multi-currency system according to research done by Banele Dlamini and Leonard Mbira entitled “The Current Zimbabwean Liquidity Crisis: A Review of its Precipitates“.
Besides liquidity crunch, Zimbabwe’s economy has not been performing well recently as companies closed down.
New hopes amongst the Zimbabwean people have appeared as a new President takes office promising to engage the developed world for the country’s economic recovery.
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