Emyooga turned into a scam

In various localities, citizens were encouraged to by community development officers to organise themselves in groups in order to benefit from this initiative.

I was privileged to belong to one of these groups, based in Oyam District in northern Uganda. The publicised position by local authorities was that each group consisting of about 30 people would have Shs30 million placed in their kitty to finance their small enterprises. 

Each group was asked to raise Shs300,000 which would be deposited into a joint bank account. All prerequisite requirements for accessing Emyooga funds were readily availed by the enthusiastic groups. From that point on, information regarding the initiative became elusive and disheartening to say the least.

First of all, we were told that the Shs30 million was not meant for small groups of the calibre of VSLA( Village Saving and Loan Association). Instead the money would be shared in a holistic manner by the various business clusters in entire constituencies. For instance, all the boda boda riders in Oyam South constituency would share the Shs30 million.

Secondly, the impression given was that there was no guarantee of accessing the money. The fact that a handful of people were selected for training on behalf of the groups with no specific dates and time frames, created suspicion.

Thirdly, the community development officers kept on making telephone calls to district officials for clarification. They didn’t seem to grasp the modus operandi of the scheme.

Lastly, the groups saw no reason to bother with the more cumbersome process of accessing the money from the loan scheme that Emyooga turned out to be. Groups had already been acquiring such finances under VSLA.

Consequently, the mixed signals and related confusion, triggered mass abandonment of the programme. Frankly this was a case of implementation failure. The people responsible for policy formation and solutions for us, should wake up and smell the coffee.

Robert Gira, [email protected]