Ministry for cooperatives among skilled youths

Ministry of Trade and Industry has called on skilled youths to establish and work in cooperatives to effectively benefit from and sustain their trades.

The ministry’s small and medium enterprises and cooperatives principal secretary Francis Zhuwao said this in Dowa District during a meeting with 70 youths trained in various vocational skills under the Youth Skills Challenge Support Program.

Comsip Cooperative Union Limited is implementing the initiative under the Livelihoods Support Program of the Social Support for Resilient Livelihoods Project funded by the World Bank.

Zhuwao said cooperatives should be embraced because they help people to be in charge of their income generating activities.

He said: “They should not operate in isolation. Cooperatives are good models of doing businesses with advantages such as predictable financing, bargaining power on prices, available markets that need huge volumes, have access to loans and value addition on goods for big profits.”

He said the initiative will make the skilled youths to effectively contribute to the industrialisation pillar of the Malawi Vision 2063.

Comsip Cooperative Union Limited chief executive officer Tenneson Gondwe said cooperatives empower people to sustain livelihoods.

“We will equip them with best ways to run the proposed cooperatives that will strengthen their transformation process of eliminating poverty in their households. We gave them the start-up tools, and there are loans that they have to access to boost their businesses once they are in cooperatives,” he said.

One of the youths trained in phone repairing, Mary Duncan, thanked Comsip for making them productive and be responsible in reducing poverty.

“We will do anything necessary as advised to get full proceeds of what our skills can earn us,” she said.

About 673 youths nationwide were trained in tailoring, welding, plumbing and hair dressing, among other skills, and were given capital start-up tools.