Kikwete: Thieving coops come under fire

President Jakaya Kikwete yesterday urged for transformation of cooperatives from its traditional role of crop procurement, inputs and credit provision to investment vehicles for members’ welfare.

Mr Kikwete also lashed at some co-operatives which have turned out to be gangs of thieves. He made the remarks late Wednesday when launching the Kagera Cooperation Union (KCU) investment complex in Bukoba.

“Kagera Region is among pioneers of the co-operative movement in the country; KCU should maintain that by leading in transforming our focus to invest members’ money in projects which will make them feel the value for their money.

“But there are some cooperatives which are gangs of thieves, stealing in daylight. These should learn from you,” he said. The president said the government paid all debts the cooperatives unions were having countrywide, to relieve them of the running costs, but surprisingly some have plunged back into bigger debts.

He attributed the trend to lack of committed and diligent leaders. “We should not remain the crop dealers only, instead we should look into the possibility of setting up big investments as it has been done by KCU,” he said.

“Our cooperative unions have gone through a number of problems as they struggled to compete with the private sector and many have not been able to provide their members with services they need.

“The government responded to this problem by introducing a new Cooperative Policy (2002) to help cooperatives to regain their importance in the economic lives of the people,” said the president.

However, President Kikwete noted, the policy will be redundant if members put in power leaders who lack integrity and who undermine government plans to facilitate development of cooperatives and members.

He said the cooperative union key areas of concentration should be to ensure that their members’ interests were given priority, saying as for Kagera, coffee farmers should get preference. Before the launch, Mr Kikwete also laid the foundation stone for the construction and expansion of Bukoba Airport. The project is estimated to cost 21bn/-.

Expansion of the Bukoba Airport was among CCM’s promises in the 2010 Election Manifesto. It started in February, last year and upon completion in February, next year,it will have the capacity to serve 500,000 passengers a year.