On Saturday over three hundred members of the leading cooperative organisation under the Windsor SACCO witnessed the celebrations marking this year’s 23rd year of existence in Entebbe.
The day’s events started with a matching session from the Windsor SACCO offices thru the town areas to the Leisure park where this year’s annual general meeting was held.
This day has been marked on the calendar to celebrate all the founding members that had the vision and mission to financially empower the former employees of the former Windsor Lake Victoria Hotel in Entebbe.
The Windsor Employees Co-operative Savings and Credit Society Ltd (Windsor SACCO) was started by twenty five (25) members with a common intention of economic development and poverty eradication amongst the said members while in employment.
And in 1997, these members started a self-help association that was formally registered by the registrar of Co-operatives Societies in the 1998.
These members have continued to depict who we are over the years and have made us achieve milestones of success.
The current board chairmanship, Mr John Whyte Baleke and 17 others including the supervisory board have continued to ‘push’ the co-operative to it’s best with a saving growth of over one billion shillings (UGX 1,942,646,480/=) as at 31st December 2022 and over 500 fully registered members.
We have reliably established that last year also the savings co-operative increased with an 18.9% increase in savings revenue of UGX 309,190,547/= .
The SACCO has continued register success including purchasing a one acre land at Kikaya town in Buwaya,Wakiso district in replacement of the Kajjansi land that was sold UGX 304,000,000/= of which UGX 200,000,000/= was invested in the ICEA money market fund and rest used to boost the loanable funds.
The SACCO has faced lots of challenges including bad debtors that have failed to clear their loans to date and expired loans of over 160 defaulters on the run.
“Bad loans have been provided for with a provision of UGX 84M to better our books of accounts but we continue to pursue the defaulters along the guarantors.This provisioned amount is part of the surplus achieved in the financial year 2022 & if there was no bad loans,it would increase on our patronage bonus
“Windsor SACCO has proved a taste of time in extending affordable capital to the enterprising young people in Entebbe Municipality. Through its credit, savings and now investments, a number of people have created businesses that have sliced poverty to a certain extent”, said Economist John Socrates Mugabi.
Following the end of the COVID 19 lockdowns, various SACCO sectors that had suffered a serious set backs are steadily improving and members have resumed saving and paying loans .
This had gone to near stand still due effects of the pandemic on the economy-said Godfrey Kasozi also Windsor SACCO manager.
“We should endeavor to pay our loans as per loan agreement because defaulting becomes very expensive to the borrower if the loan is forwarded to external debt collectors and to court”, said report.(Report By: ROBERT PEACOCK KAWEESI)
