Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa has said parents have the
obligation of bringing up their children under the foundations of
God-fearing so that the nation can have honest and hard-working people.
“A
nation of honest and hard-working people starts at the family level. If
our households live without honesty and integrity, it is very hard for
the nation to have honest people. So, it is important to our families to
ensure that we have God-fearing and religious children,” said the Prime
Minister.
He made the statement yesterday (Saturday,
June 17, 2017) when he was speaking to guests, who attended a fund
raising drive for construction of a church and the house of a priest in
the Zuzu Designated Parish, on the outskirts of Dodoma Town.
The
fund-raising drive was preceded by Thanksgiving Service for the late
Mzee Xavery Mizengo Pinda, the father of retired Prime Minister, Mizengo
Peter Pinda. Mzee Xavery Pinda died on November 27, last year, at
Dodoma Regional Hospital and laid to rest at his Kibaoni home village in
Mlele District, Katavi Region.
PM Majaliwa reiterated
that the parents were supposed to evaluate themselves over the
upbringing of their children and question themselves if such children
had care that they deserved. “Through today’s sermons we have received,
we need to evaluate ourselves over the upbringing of children.
“Do
our children get the upbringing they deserve? Do we bring them up under
the foundations of giving out for Gog or do we teach them about
monopolizing wealth? Do we question our children about their quickly
gotten wealth? Or do we congratulate them and become happy without
knowing where they have obtained that wealth?,” queried the PM.
“I
would like to use this opportunity to urge all parents that we need to
make an effort in investing in the upbringing of our children so that we
become such kind of mirror of the nation that we want to build. So, it
is necessary that we bring our children up under the foundations of
religious faith, honesty and earnest patriotism for our nation,” the PM
insisted.
In the fund-raising drive, the PM and his
wife contributed Sh10 million, whereby a total of Sh160 million was
raised. Out of the cash, pledges amounted to Sh111,150,000, Sh38,447,000
was cash in hand and Sh10,403,000 was worth of building materials.
Earlier,
presiding over the Thanksgiving Mass, the Deputy Bishop of Dodoma’s
Catholic Cathedral, Fr Chesco Msaga said everybody was supposed to thank
God, for there was no human being, who could claim that he was the way
he was because of his own intelligence.
“Even we
ourselves forget to thank God, especially when things are good to us. We
think that our things are good because of our own knowledge. We need to
remember that our lives are in the Hands of God as He is the One who
Knows our ways,” he said, reviewing to the example of 10 lepers who were
healed by Jesus Christ and only one returned to thank Him.
For
his part, retired Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda said the fund-raising
drive followed the decision of Dodoma’s Catholic Cathedral Archbishop
Beatus Kinyaiya to choose Zuzu to be a parish.
