The Government will increase the operational funds for youth and women groups, the Minister of Gender, Labour and Social Development, Janat Mukwaya, has said.
“We have increased the resource allocation for institutional support to 20% from the current 10% to provide sufficient resources for training, technical support and supervision of groups,” she said.
This was during a two day tour of projects under the Youth Livelihood Programme and Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme in Makindye-Ssabagabo municipality in Wakiso district on Wednesday and Thursday.
She said the programmes would involve the use of ICT in monitoring and mobile money for easy repayment. The minister said among the recommendations Cabinet approved was the need to reduce the minimum number of members per group from 15 to five in order to enhance cohesion.
“The groups are too big. It was difficult to find a group of 15 individuals with the same idea,” Mukwaya said.
She said under the new arrangement, youth from a parish would be allowed to form a group to access funds from Youth Livelihood Programme accounts in Bank of Uganda. Margaret Sserunjogi, the chairperson of Wabiyinja Mutundwe Wakiso Charcoal Briquettes Group, which received money last year, said they have found difficulty in marketing their products because people have not yet embraced them.
Gertrude Nakalembe, the chairperson of Hope for the Future Women Tailoring Group in Namasuba, Kampala, asked the minister for more support so that they can acquire modern equipment to ease their work.
“The group faces the challenge of marketing the products stiff competition with imported ones,” she said.
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A total of sh265b was approved for the Youth Livelihood Fund for a period of five years (2014 to 2018).