Councillor boosts women empowerment initiative

GOVERNMENT’S quest to reduce poverty by 2030, deserve commendation Chakunkula ward 32 councillor Smart Mwitwa has said.

Speaking during a strategic planning workshop for 22 women’s clubs in his ward recently, Mr Mwitwa said Government had been undertaking empowerment programmes to the communities to reduce poverty levels.

He said despite the tremendous efforts to improve people’s livelihoods poverty levels had remained high because the strategies used in the empowerment programmes were consumptive in nature.

“The Chakunkula Women Empowerment organisation is a brain child of my strong conviction that “if you empower a woman, then you empower a family and indeed empower the nation. To this extent I kept observing many times, our Government has undertaken empowerment programmes to the communities but with fewer results as poverty levels have continued to remain high.

“The question is why do people continue in poverty despite the several empowerment initiatives? After interrogating the above questions, it dawned on me that a number of times, the programmes have not yielded the desired results because of the strategies usually employed,” he said.

He said the empowerment programmes were mostly consumptive in nature aspPeople were given money or materials and they consume immediately without any thought for tomorrow. So this means the problems are just attended to for today and not for tomorrow hence the poverty continues,” he said.

Mr Mwitwa said through empowering women, the welfare of many households had improved.

He said to fight poverty, there was need for a paradigm and mindset shift by members of the community.