Emyooga program has potential of turning around Uganda’s economy, says MP Dan Kimosho

The Kazo County Member of Parliament, Dan Kimosho has said Emyooga program has the potential to turn around the economy.

Emyooga rotates on the concept of members doing a similar job organizing themselves under a sacco, save and later borrow from their own sacco .

Speaking during the Emyooga monitoring function organized in his constituency and presided over by the State Minister for Microfinance, Haruna Kyeyune Kasolo, Kimosho said the program has exploits that will see it change the economy.

" This program can bring about change because for us in politics we want to see the trickle down effectWe .need to see that money gets to the common person,”Kimosho said.

The Kazo County MP lao noted that everyone, including politicians ought to support the program throughout the country to ensure its success .

Minister Kasolo said the indicators of good performance of Emyooga program are savings and loan repayments by members.

" Those are the two benchmarks I use when I am evaluating performance," Kasolo told Emyooga beneficiaries in Kazo.

With savings to a tune of shs114 million, the minister said Kazo is still lagging behind compared to other constituencies around the country.

" In Kyotera just one Sacco has saved over Shs 200 million but here the entire county has Shs 114 million.  You need to pull up your socks.”

He also noted the Microfinance Support Centre which is the implementing agency is going to scale up trainings about Emyooga to ensure members of the public don’t have excuses.

"I have already told my people to do more trainings because people need to reminded again and again. People forget easily and others have never attended trainings. We need to train them more,”Kasolo said.

Whereas a number of politicians in the area led by the MP Dan Kimosho had complained that money had spent a lot of time on the account without being disbursed, Minister Kasolo said in response that there was no problem in that since the beneficiaries had to first be prepared before getting the money.

" People had to first to be trained before getting the money. The money was there but you had to acquire knowledge and skills of using it before getting it,” he said.

According to Abdul Bisaso, the deputy national coordinator for Emyooga program, an additional shs100 billion will be injected into the sacco.

"We are going to look at the performance of all saccos and those that have done well will each get Shs 20 million this year,” Bisaso said.

He noted that Emyooga program can't be linked to politics because the idea was midwifed in 2018 in Kassanda district long before the elections.

"This has nothing to do with politics. The money arrived during election time but the program had already been initiated and adopted by cabinet," Bisaso said.