Sh250 billion fund to lift youth out of poverty

Apart from these, Pius Bigirimana the Gender Ministry, Permanent Secretary says despite the challenges, the programme has registered significant achievements.

One of these, is the fund’s recovery at 67 percent, he said adding that all the districts have reached 50 percent repayment of the amount due.

However, he noted that local government officials were frustrating the programme through misappropriation, corruption, and collusion.

But he noted that the ministry was undertaking administrative measures to recover millions of funds that have been swindled.

Bigirimanadrove the point home since the review at which he was making these remarks brought together District Chairpersons, Resident District Commissioners (RDCs), Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs), Focal Point Persons and Youth Chairperson.

According BadruBukenya, a lecturer at Makerere University, who has done research on the programme, YLP can be implemented better if the institutional support is increased from 10 to atleast 20 percent of the total fund.

Institutional support covers coordination of the programme, monitoring and evaluation, and facilitation to the Inspectorate of Government to help with accountability.

“Success of any microfinance project relies on monitoring,” Bukenya says, adding that this has not been very evident in the implementation of the project.

Some beneficiaries The Independent has interacted with say most of the times they have to rely on the officials at sub-county in case of a technical problem. But because of limited resources, many times the officials at the sub-county do not have resources to assist them.

Beneficiaries also say it is difficult for large groups of 15 members to work together. The amounts given—up to Shs12.5 million—when divided amongst the group members become very little.

Most of the time, less than 50 percent of the members are active—mostly the chairman and a few others.

Experts have recommended that the maximum number in a group should be six members.

On paper the programme is straightforward but practically, critics say, it is not—a lot of paperwork leads to manipulation of youths. For instance, some youths had to pay sub-county officials to help them fill the forms.

The biggest challenge for the project is that a huge percentage of beneficiaries invested in agriculture and when the season is bad, their projects performed poorly.

 Indeed, the report notes that crop production and livestock production, which account for over 40% of the disbursements, have tended to suffer poor yields, and lack of water, high prices of feeds and outbreaks of diseases such as swine fever, foot and mouth disease, Newcastle and east coast fever in various parts of the country.

Officials at the ministry say the affected projects are being considered on a case-by-case basis for rescheduling of the repayments and/or refinancing depending on the magnitude of the losses incurred.

Negative political statements have not helped matters. Apparently, some political leaders have engaged in spreading negative propaganda telling the youth that the YLP funds are government funds that should not be repaid, while others are reported to be telling the youth that the fund is a political reward.

In Abim District, for instance, the District Council leadership resolved that the youth who have refused to repay should not be forced to pay. As a result, this action has affected the speed of revolving the funds to other youth in the district.

But many agree that underfunding is the biggest challenge the programme is facing. It is to blame for inadequate supervision of the programme which, perhaps, would have ensured greater success.