BY MBONO MDLULI
MBABANE – Business women residing in Mpolonjeni, under Motshane Constituency are thankful to their Member of Parliament (MP) Wilton Nkambule and the Republic of China (Taiwan) for helping them in their broiler production businesses.
The business women have been able to apply for the Micro Finance Revolving Fund provided by the Taiwanese Government. They were assisted by MP Nkambule to apply for the grant and they did so through their respective organisations, namely; Maphindi’s Farm Produce and Erimel Farm Produce. Maphindi’s Farm Produce was given E24 000 and Erimel got E19 000. Each of these organisations have three members.
Today, four women from the two organisations were at Khuba Traders to buy some material to grow their broiler chickens. They bought the material at Khuba Traders in Mbabane. The Motshane legislator was also there to witness the women buy their first material, through the Taiwanese fund. The material included chicken feed and other materials. The women could not hide their excitement after buying the materials.
They were grateful to MP Nkambule for having alerted them about the opportunity and also help them all the way until they got the funding. However, the woman elected not to speak, but sent one of them, Cynthia Dlamini, to speak on their behalf.
Dlamini said they were also thankful to the Taiwanese Government for availing this opportunity for them. She called upon other women to take this opportunity so that they could be helped. MP Nkambule, when asked how they got to know about his opportunity, said they were alerted last week when the Taiwanese Embassy in Eswatini went to his constituency to donate bags of rice to some schools within his constituency.
Nkambule also thank the Government of Taiwan for the opportunity and also called upon other women to make use of this opportunity. He said he wished for these business women to grow one day and be suppliers of some supermarkets so that they could make good profits out of their businesses. She said for this to happen, she wished for them to have a bigger poultry house so that they could supply the broilers at large quantities.
He implored Government to help in this regard. He said organisations such as Micro Projects could also help. Nkambule also pleaded with Government to consider reviewing the policies of the Regional Development Fund (RDF), regarding the number of people needed to get funding from it. He said the 10 was a huge number for people to start a business because they could have different goals. He said the Mpolonjeni business women showed that even if a group had three people, it was possible for a business to start.
