Kibaha women, youth receive training on effective loan utilisation

COAST REGION: KIBAHA District Council in Coast Region in collaboration with the Tanzania Women Empowerment Network (TAWEN) is working to build capacity to women and youth groups in the district to enable them utilise loans worth 900m/- to be provided by the council to special groups in the district in this financial year.

The District Executive Director (DED), Ms Regina Biyeda made the revelations a couple of days ago in Mlandizi Division during a one-day training on Clean Cooking Energy and Entrepreneurship organised by TAWEN.

The training brought together more than 1,000 women and youth from across the district.

Regina said that the council as per government’s directives has allocated 900m/-   from its revenue collections to be provided as loans, whereby four per cent of the money will be given to women and youth groups respectively and two per cent to People Living with Disabilities in the district.

“We are very grateful to our government under President Samia Suluhu Hassan for creating a good environment and allowing these loans which had stopped for a while to continue being released to support these groups economically across the country,” she said.

Giving further details, she noted that the council is continuing with providing education on proper use of loans before releasing the money and that the training was part of the process.

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She also warned that her office will not hesitate to take legal action to those who will not be faithful in returning the loans on time as planned.

TAWEN Director, Ms Florence Masunga said that her organisation aims at reaching out to not less than 10,000 women and youth in all regions in the country with education on advantages of using clean cooking energy and entrepreneurism.

She said, “we have already provided 3,000 electrical energy efficient stoves to entrepreneurs in Dar es Salaam region and we are planning to do the same in other regions in the country. Our aim is to support the President’s efforts in campaigning for the use of clean cooking energies to replace the use of charcoal and firewood to save the environment and improve people’s health.”

She added: “We are seeing lives of women who have started to use clean energy in cooking being transformed positively across the country”.

Mwanaharusi Rajab- on behalf of other women thanked the council and TAWEN for organising the training which she said will help them shift from using charcoal and firewood and start using clean energy in cooking to save the environment, money and improving their health.