By Wasike Elvis
Uasin Gishu County Government through the Ministry of Cooperative Enterprise Development is poised to ensure that people in co-operatives are empowered financially through giving loans.
According to the CEC in charge of Co-operative Development Esther Mutai Sh315 million has been set aside to be disbursed to Co-operatives societies in form of loans this financial year.
“Our aim is to ensure that residents in co-operatives are empowered financially through saving and getting loans from cooperatives. In the last five years we loaned Sh130 million through County Co-operatives and Enterprise Development Fund to 59 co-operatives and we expect more since we have increased the amount to Sh315 million,” said Mutai.
She added that the objective of her ministry is to promote, register and revive co-operatives, build capacity for co-operatives, ensure compliance with co-operative legislation and provide affordable credit to co-operative societies.
“We also carry out audit of co-operative societies, promote entrepreneurship, assist in conflict resolution that touches on cooperatives among others,” she said.
Mutai noted that her department has put in place measures to grow the co-operative movement such as capacity building of co-operative leaders to be able to manage them well since most members are not trained and to this effect we will institute five day training for the leadership on good corporate leadership.
“From March to April this year we have been carrying out co-operative sensitisation that is on the importance ofresidents joiningcooperatives where we preached the gospel to every ward and we assisted them to register Sacco’s,” she noted.
She reiterated that their aim is to ensure that more youths join Sacco’s since at the moment they are only full of old individuals.
Mutai revealed that they are poised to ensure that all Sacco’s and cooperative societies are running on ICT platforms for them to run efficiently and effectively to serve members on the spot.
