One of the Women's bakery projects in Gulu Municipality. All photos by David Okema.
0
0
Last Updated on: 12th December 2018, 05:32 pm
Gulu – Ministry of Labour, Gender and Social Development (MLGSD) has promised to continue giving financial support to best performing women projects being funded by Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP) to enable them grow bigger.
The assurance was made on Tuesday – December 11, 2018 by Mr. Frank Mugabi, Communications Officer for UWEP during field visits in Gulu Municipality.
Different women projects were visited by Ministry officials, Gulu officials and team of Journalists from Northern region (West Nile, Acholi and Lango).
“We will refinance women’s group who have paid back their funds so that they continue to enhance their capacity, buy more equipment, more inputs and therefore our support to the group is unreserved,” Mr. Mugabi said.
Mr. Mugabi was responding to a request from Ms. Evelyn Adong, the chairperson Lubangatwero Widows’ Bakery Group located in Kirombe parish, Layibi division, Gulu Municipality.
While explaining the activities carried out by the group, Ms. Adong said their bakery plant got Seven Million shillings (shs.7, 000,000) funding from UWEP in November 2017 and managed to refund back the money [loan] to the ministry.
The bakery project which has lasted for one year has 30 female members aged between 18-60 years old and is currently having a saving of one million (shs. 1,000,000) Uganda shilling as profit accruing from the sales of doughnuts, cakes and other products.
But Adong said after paying back all the Uganda shilling 7,000,000 million, the group still needs more support to enable them expand their scale of production and fight poverty among members at household level.
“UWEP gave us Uganda shilling 7,000,000 million and we have refunded it. We still need more funding because we are still using manual labor which is very tiresome and we uses firewood as fuel which makes our product to have a undesirable taste,” Ms. Adong appeals.
She further added that much as the group has refunded UWEP money fully, there is a strong demand to develop individual members’ capacities in the group and the little savings can’t rescue them immediately from individual household poverty.
She noted that the group has submitted application for refinancing to the Municipality focal point person and in the application, the group among other items, budgeted for; machine for mixing ingredients, diesel powered generator, electric oven, among others which will cost about Uganda shilling 12,500,000 million.
Mr. Mugabi noted that the decision to finance is because women makes up to 53% of the labour force in Uganda with majority participating in business enterprises but they continue facing challenges to access loan from banking institutions due to high interest rate.
“Women are majority in the business sector and also they face a big challenge in accessing credits to startup businesses,” he says, adding: “It is a total mismatch where majority of the population who are in business and can’t access money; that is why government started the programme to enable women gets direct credits to input in the project.”
He also tasked the Gulu Municipality UWEP focal point person, Mr. Geoffrey Lakwonyero to speed up on processing the document so that it reached the ministry and the group is refinanced before the end of 2018.
UWEP focal point person noted that Gulu Municipality has only received one application seeking refinancing, arguing that Technical Executive Committee in the Municipal council is due to evaluate and pass the application to the MLGSD for refinancing.
About UWEP
UWEP is a government funded project targeting unemployed women between ages of 18-60 especially vulnerable groups like widows, single young mothers, gender based violence survivors and women living with disability, those living in slums and villagers across Uganda. It gives fund to women and is repaid at zero interest within three years.
UWEP’s data shows that Lango district which includes, Apac Municipality, Dokolo, Kole, Oyam district Local government has is performing very well with majority of the groups’ money, exceeding the due amount they obtained from UWEP.
West Nile is also doing tremendously well in the districts of Zombo, Nebbi, Moyo and Maracha. And in Acholi, only Gulu Municipality is performing well with the rest of the district local governments, performing below the belt in term of repayment since the programme was enrolled.
However, despite the successful story in some of the districts, thousands of projects that applied for the funds remain unfunded due to delayed release of funds by Ministry of Finance according to UWEP communications officer.
Since Financial Year (FY) 2015/2016 when government allocated Uganda shilling 585 billion for UWEP projects for five years for financial years 2015/2016 to 2019/2020, Ministry of Finance has only disbursed Uganda shilling 75 billion.
Northern Uganda which comprises of Acholi, West Nile and Lango sub regions got 7bn (21.2%) and funded 1,395 projects of about 20,000 women projects across in the various enterprising projects like produce buying and selling, selling second hand clothes, bakery, poultry, crafts among others.
