September 11, 2007
TODAY'S PICK
Our population is anticipated to be 130 million by 2050. The ongoing debate on the current population growth rate of 3.2% has elicited mixed reactions. The President and some religious leaders have been heard encouraging parents to produce more children. A positive argument here is that this will translate into a wider market for goods and services. The President believes this.
However, this raises some questions. How will a population of 130 million people be taken care of? The current dependant population, which is 50.4% of the total population, is in itself enough burden. The population explosion as seen in the current growth rate forewarns an over-dependence burden on the incomes of the households and the government.
Households with bigger numbers of children to cater for will no doubt be relegated to more impoverishment. Their capacity to save and invest will be depleted due to the huge strain on their incomes. Heavy government expenditure on social needs like education, health care and social infrastructure will be overstretched, putting the national resources at a risk of rapid depletion.
With the 3.2% population growth, the Millennium Development Goals will be far from realisation. With 130 million people in 2050, how will the government provide and sustain Universal Primary Education and Universal Secondary Education?
The current trend in economic development and growth shows that reduced population growth complements sustainable development. The developed countries with the most minimal or relatively negative population growth and sounding economies have their dependent population at about 25%. This reflects minimal dependency syndrome. So where is the logic of encouraging people to produce more children?
The government must reinforce education of the masses about family planning and economic empowerment of women. People driven laws and policies need to be made to set the highest number of children a family should have.
The President and religious leaders especially the Catholic Church, which opposes birth control, should stop encouraging parents to produce more children.
Joshua Masinde
Posts
3 comments:
Mr Masinde
Some religious and cultural (this latter too is crucial and should not be subsumed under religion) attitudes apart, for a programme of family planning to succeed there must be a robust health delivery system manned by a caring and sensitive staff (doctors, nurses, social workers - even chaplains). Information needs to be disseminated and easily accessed so that questions are answered and fears and superstition dispelled. But where proper medical care is the privilege of the rich, as is the case in Uganda today, no effective family planning can take place.
I, too, do not buy Museveni's theory about population and development. Nor am I opposed to contraception. But the Catholic Church has a point when they argue that family planning or birth control (as they call it) is not a substitute or the solution to development or freedom of women. Education is.
Rev Amos Kasibante
Leicester, UK
Hallo Mr. Kasibante,
You are right. I think the best option would be education. This can discard such a conservative view that the more children one has, the more prestige one will be accorded. The fact is that there are some health care systems in place. Nevertheless, most of them are concentrated in urban locations. There is still a lot the government needs to do. Institutions are churning out nurses, doctors and social workers. But, in the face of few health care institutions, where will all these work? If they go into private practice, that means the poor will not access their services of which family planning methods is one of them. The better option is education.
Thanks for the insight.
bvxsome one has answered you on my blog.. see them
Post a Comment