Today At Cathedral

Today we were to Cathedral to talk with their SACCOS members.  Cathedral is right downtown Iringa.  The SACCOS here was started by a local businessman.  It ran for awhile and then was suspended when there was a series of problems with the leadership and their borrowers stopped paying.  Last year we visited them and they asked if we might help.  Enoch has been working to get an audit done for them by the government (the first step) and today we were supposed to hear the results.

When we went to start our car it didn’t start.   It isn’t a long walk so we used this “opportunity” to get some exercise.  We arrived at Cathedral promptly at 10, but we didn’t find many SACCOS members waiting for the meeting to start.  Soon Enoch arrived, followed by our interns.  We found 4 members of the SACCOS also looking for the meeting – but there are 163 registered members in this SACCOS.

The Iringa Municipal Coop officer arrived and Enoch talked with him for awhile.  We had thought we were going to meet in the church, but it was double booked today.  We were a small group so we met  in the loft of the church.  There were only 7 members of the SACCOS present so we wondered if we could have a meeting with so few.  The Co-op officer told us that he could authorize a “special conditions” meeting – but it didn’t really matter because the lady who prepared the report was in the hospital and the report would not be available today.  (This was the third delay)

Itiweni and a few other SACCOS members arrived around 10:45 and the meeting began.  Since there was no auditor’s report the main discussion was about how to proceed.  First they talked about why there were so few who came.  Our opinion is that since this SACCOS has not done anything since 2009 people have just given up – but who knows.  The Co-op officer said that he would authorize a general meeting and consider whoever showed up a legal quorum – but we had to make an announcement and wait a week.  We agreed to come back next Saturday, after the conclusion of our training meetings, for another meeting.  Then the Coop officer suggested that we wait for a final audit reading, etc.  Itiweni got up and scolded the officer and the members for delaying and delaying.  She cited some of the provisions of the law and told them it was time to just get on with it.  This seemed to get the meeting moving toward a close with the Co-op officer agreeing that next time they could dismiss the board and appoint a 5 person committee to do collections.  The meeting broke up with the understanding that we would be back again next week for another round.  Stay tuned!

Our car would not start - so we walked over.

Cathedral is right downtown.

Enock went over and talked to the municipal Coop officer.

Only 12 of the 163 SACCOS members came to the meeting.  We thought that maybe after being dormant since 2009 the members had just given up.  We will see who shows up next week.