By Romeo Umali
Minister of Youth and Sports, Ulemu Msungama, has told the National Economic Empowerment Fund (NEEF) to conduct civic education on how people can access loans following complaints that people are finding it difficult to be given loans.
Msungama said this on Wednesday when he visited NEEF offices in Lilongwe where he wanted to find out how their operations are going, including an inquiry if the loanees are politically involved or not.
“For beneficiaries, there is nothing to do with politics. For challenges they are facing, the government, through the ministry of finance, has come in to help them in terms of transportation as well as loan officers. The only thing that I have asked them to do is to make a good civic education because to me it appears as a challenge. So I have asked NEEF to train people so that they should know exactly what is required of them so that whatever they will do will not find it as a challenge,” Msungama told journalists.
NEEF assistant executive director Humphrey Mdyetseni, however, insisted that loan disbursement is going perfectly.
He said the organisation has made remarkable progress as far as rolling out the disbursement of loans is concerned.
“Of course we had various problems at the beginning, especially when NEEF was reconstructed in September. We started actual loans disbursement in February and in two months we have already disbursed K3 Billion of the K5 Billion that the government gave us, which we consider as (going) at quite tremendous pace and our target is to finish the remaining K 2 Billion by Mid–May so that we can continue with other resources that the government is going to re-pledge the funds with,” he said.
The National Economic Empowerment Fund (NEEF) was formerly known as Malawi Enterprise Development Fund (MEDF) Limited and was registered in February 2014 as a company limited by Guarantee.
