Members of national executive committee for women councils have pledged to strengthen the monitoring and supervision of women groups applying and receiving funds under the Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme.
The National chairperson for women councils Farida Kibowa says the new strategy will eliminate ghost women groups.
“In our leadership, we are going to ask government to give us more funds such that we finance all the groups that have not benefited. We call upon government to consider the many groups that have applied so that they all benefit,” said Farida before adding that;
“The challenge we have is that when they get the money and payback, they cannot be refinanced before the other groups have benefited.”
Frank Mugabi, the Communications officer Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme explained that they have been unable to fund many groups because of financial constraints.
“The program has not been able to fund as many women projects as they should have because of the inadequate releases from the ministry of finance.
“President Yoweri Museveni talked about this program and pledged that he would dedicate about Shs250billion over the 5years for this program.
“That meant that each year the program should have been receiving about Shs50billion but ever since we started in 201/2016, we have to date received about Shs57billion.
“If we were able to get the Shs250billion that was promised by the president, we would at least be financing over 100,000 groups.”
The Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP) is an initiative of the Government of Uganda that is aimed at improving access to financial services for women and equipping them with skills for enterprise growth, value addition and marketing of their products and services.
UWEP, implemented as a Rolling Programme under the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (MGLSD), is intended to empower Ugandan women for economic development.
The Programme is designed to address the challenges women face in undertaking economically viable enterprises including the limited access to affordable credit, limited technical knowledge and skills for business development, limited access to markets as well as information regarding business opportunities.
The programme is envisaged to increase participation of women in business development, increase their incomes, livelihood security and overall quality of life.
