Youth Development Fund loans go astray, PAC hears

Spira Tlhankane | Thursday June 4, 2015 16:21

The YDF is an empowerment programme aimed at encouraging out-of-school, marginalised and unemployed youth to venture into sustainable and viable income generating projects.

The Fund offers successful applicants up to P100,000 comprising both a grant and an interest free loan. Yesterday, the Ministry Of Youth, Sports and Culture permanent secretary, Lewis Malikongwa stunned PAC members when he said the ministry could not account for the millions of Pula likely to be outstanding in the Fund.

Malikongwa said the Fund needed to be improved and the Ministry was working on proper tracking systems to recover the loans.

“We are working on automating the whole system so that everything can be accounted for,” he said. “Until we establish a proper tracking system, we cannot reveal the amount of money from the outstanding collections.”

Gaborone Bonnington South MP, Ndaba Gaolatlhe said the ministry should not continue with a fund they cannot account for.

“The YDF is not accounted for and they should not run a fund they cannot monitor,” he said. “You have lost everything because of the failure to track down these loans. You don’t know how much you are owed and that means you (have) lost everything.” Gaolatlhe added that time was not a factor in reconfiguring the YDF, as most beneficiaries of the fund were not making profit.  “There should have been a manner in which the funds were allocated. “There should be a record of liabilities and proper processes,” he said. Malikongwa also told legislators that the ministry did not have any framework in place to measure the Fund’s progress. “We have challenges about measurements. Generally we don’t have anything to monitor our progress. ”Our ministry’s contribution has an impact on the growth of youth projects, but we cannot measure the development.

“We don’t have any framework in place,” he said. Meanwhile PAC also heard that most of the YDF beneficiaries did not have any marketing skills and as a result could not penetrate markets, particularly those that were already saturated. Malikongwa said the ministry was working on a proposal to establish a joint youth fund with the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency.