The NRM Party Director for Mobilization, Hon Rosemary Nansubuga Sseninde, has agreed with the leadership of Kampala market that it is high time they helped the vendors tackle poverty.
While meeting vendors and leaders of Bugolobi market, Sseninde said fighting poverty is an individual initiative, noting that it takes one to find ways of lifting themselves from poverty before the government can assist them.
“Poverty has always been here before even all of us were born. Even in the Bible, poverty is talked about. It is, however, everyone’s initiative to find ways of dealing with it. The role of government is to provide an enabling environment like it has done now to ensure you can come to the market and work and earn something. In that regard, the government has put in place programs like the Parish Development Model, Emyooga, Entanidkwa, Youth funds and women funds to ensure you can use them to get out of poverty,” Sseninde said.
She noted that with such programs, the government aims at assisting and enabling the population to fight poverty themselves.
Sseninde told the vendors and their leadership that she was traversing all markets in Kampala as a fact-finding mission aimed at identifying problems faced to see how government can solve them.
“I am here to profile and document issues that burden the market vendors. In that regard, the KCCA Executive Director, the Kampala Minister and the NRM secretariat are aware that I am here. I will make a report and copy it to them to see how to solve the problems faced by market vendors.”
She promised the vendors that after profiling their problems and making a report, she will hand it over to the relevant authorities but above all, follow it up to ensure the recommendations are implemented.
“I have got that information about the issues affecting the vendors and on return to the office, I will follow up on the monies and government programs that you said you have missed ensuring the loopholes are closed,” she said.
Then NRM party director for mobilization, however, noted that in case of assistance to fight poverty, the government cannot assist the vendors individually, but rather through their savings and credit cooperatives (Saccos).
She noted that through SACCOs, the vendors will be able to access government programs like Emyooga and the Parish Development Model because the government can’t dish out money to every individual.
To this, Hon Sseninde donated Shs1 million to the Bugoloobi market vendors’ SACCOs as seed capital to ensure vendors can borrow.