LIRA – Lira district is struggling to recover Shs 808 million disbursed to various youth groups under Youth Livelihood Programme [ YLP ].
In the financial year 2014/2015, Lira district funded 127 youth groups under YLP to the tune of Shs 998mln. However, only 71 groups have partially repaid the loans.
According to officials, only Shs 190mln has since been recovered, negatively impacting the further implementation of the programme that runs a revolving fund for the youth.
Christine Anono, district community development officer, said that several attempts were made to recover the fund but in vain.
“We carried out several trainings on financial literacy for the youth and urged them to pay back the money so that we can give to other groups but this did not yield any fruit,” she said.
She added that the district is unable to fund other new groups due to lack of funds, limiting the youth’s chances to create more jobs and wealth.
“We did what we could. We trained the youth from the onset of the project. We told them that it is a loan that you can borrow and pay back after using so that other groups can also benefit. We have also done arrest of the defaulters but it has yielded us nothing,” she added.
Meanwhile, the chairperson of Gwokcwinya Youth Group in Apoka Parish, Robinson Denis Odongo admits that most of the group members have not been able to pay back the money because they were not fully trained while others selected bad projects.
“It is true that some people were given money yet they had selected bad projects. Others just failed because they did not master the financial literacy training they underwent,” Odongo said.
Odongo added that some of the members in his group have run away after failing to pay back the loans.
“In my group, we managed to pay back over Shs 3mln but some of us ran away because there was too much pressure to pay back,” he added.
A member of Acan Youth Enterprises dealing in Cattle Rearing, Ambrose Checka said that some of his group members have misused the money.
“Some of my group leaders have misused the money by spending it on alcohol, women. Others thought it was free money from the government, especially during the 2016 presidential campaigns,” Checka said.
Pasquine Acio, the national secretary for students affairs at National Youth Council, said that the issue of paying back the revolving fund for YLP has been a challenge across the country because the youth do not have adequate skills to manage the money given to them.
“Paying back the money under YLP is a big problem all over the country. Some of them [youth] have run away to avoid being arrested,” Acio said.
YLP has not been running in the district for four years as the first beneficiaries have failed to pay back the loans.
https://thecooperator.news/kwania-youth-yet-to-take-full-advantage-of-ylp/
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