Alebtong district fails to recover Shs 1.4bln advanced to youth

ALEBTONG-Alebtong district has failed to recover Shs 1.4 billion that the government advanced to support various youth projects in the district.

The money, according to a senior district official, was disbursed under the Youth Livelihood Programme [YLP] and Youth venture Fund in three financial years [2014/2015, 2017/2018, 2019/2020].

According to the information available, the district received Shs 1.5bln in the financial years to support the projects but since then, they have managed to recover only Shs 153 million.

“These monies were given to youth groups and they were supposed to use it and pay back but a number of them have since failed to repay the revolving funds,” said the district LC5 David Kennedy Odongo.

“We are giving up in pressing them to repay the money because most of them received the funds and distributed amongst themselves,” Odongo added.

“Even Emyooga program, most of the groups received the money but they refused to repay so that they qualify for another disbursement,” Odongo added.

He said most people including the youth don’t have an investment mindset but only a consumption mindset.

YLP was designed as one of the interventions of government to address the high unemployment rate and poverty among the youth in the country.

Its objectives were to provide youth with marketable vocational skills, financial support to enable the youth to establish income-generating activities, provide the youth with entrepreneurship and life skills and provide youth with relevant knowledge and information for attitudinal change.

Polino Ogwal, the district community development officer, said they have struggled to convince the youth to repay the money.

Recently the district youth chairperson Robert Ocen, said the government was at the stage of scrapping YLP and redirect the funds to the Parish development model [PDM].

However, Odongo said YLP has failed because of the negative attitude among young people.

“The Government should invest more in working on the mindset especially the youth because failure to do that PDM will also fail,” he added.

https://thecooperator.news/amolatar-emyooga-bene%ef%ac%81ciaries-tell-success-stories/

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