The Girl-Child and Government Service Provision.pdf - Tanzania ...

Services and the girl-childThe services addressed in the WDR 2004 are education,health, drinking water, sanitation and electricity. The clientsthat are identified in the WDR 2004 are “the poor”, yet thisgroup is defined only along economic lines, with very littlerecognition of the gender dimension to poverty. One linein Box 1.1 of the WDR 2004 tries to define the pooracross income levels, with only one line recognising that“gender can exclude women from both household andpublic demands for better services.” The report lacks gendersensitivity and does not adequately address the issuesof how improvement in basic education, health, and amenitiescan be designed to better meet the needs of the mostvulnerable group of all – the girl-child. Because most of thestudies cited by the WDR 2004 look at the aggregate poor,there is not enough information to look at the possibleimpacts on various marginalised groups such as women,children, boys, the elderly and others. There is not muchanalysis on how the prescribed approach to changing thepower relations between the clients and the service providersmight affect different subgroups of poor people.After five paragraphs in a text box defining the poor, thereport fails to identity in each chapter (on different services)who and what is meant by “the poor”. The poor areclumped together as one group throughout the report, avoiceless entity – faceless, sexless and ageless. It is ratherdisturbing that a report that seeks to improve service provisionsfor the poor by their empowerment does not conductprimary interviews with poor communities andmarginalised groups. Studying “the poor” by income, genderand age categories might have provided informationabout what these groups of poor people see as their responsibilitiesand the responsibilities of the policy-makersand the service providers.The description of making education better for the poortends to focus on enrolment and retention. Not muchemphasis is placed on making the school environment andteachers more conducive to girl-child participation. If utilized,the CRC can be an important tool to assess the rightconditions for girls to attend schools. Article 12 of theCRC specifically points to children’s participation in mattersthat affect them directly.Chapter 8 of the WDR 2004, on health and nutrition services,assumes that once the poor are empowered, eitherby introducing co-payments for medical services or subsidiesthrough “market segmentation, tier pricing, and productdifferentiation”, services will then meet the needs ofthe poor. It neglects the importance of reforming thephysical environment in which health is delivered to makeit work for one of the most vulnerable and disadvantagedgroup of all, the girl-child, particularly teens. In developingcountries where young girls often do not have access toaccurate information on issues related to their health, it isimportant to have arrangements in which children up to18 years of age, for instance, can receive health care andhealth education geared to their needs and focused ontheir questions. Children and young adults often need towork out personal issues with some guidance from healthexperts.The WDR 2004’srecommendation forreformIn drawing conclusions about how services can best bereformed, the WDR 2004 proposes decentralisation. Thisstrategy would increase efficiency in service provision bybringing politicians and policy-makers closer to clients.However, the report recognises that this can work only ifpolitical, fiscal and administrative decentralisation areimplemented simultaneously or in order. The final messagefor reform of the services is contradictory. While the WDR2004 points to governmental failure in service delivery, itsuggests that the way to improve service provision is bydecentralisation, which requires the central governmentto direct the process in three areas: deconcentration, delegationand devolution. It is interesting to note that governments,which according to the WDR 2004 have failedthe poor in service provisions (with the exception of Vietnam,Cuba and the United Kingdom), would be entrustedwith the responsibility to ensure that decentralisationwould work to meet the needs of the poor.The WDR 2004 extensively discusses the power relationsand the services that have mostly failed in serving the poor.However, it does not adequately address the profile of thepoor. Groups such as women and the girl-child are notincorporated in the analysis of service provision – particularlyin health and education. The arguments made by theThe Girl-Child and Government Service Provision 85