By Yamikani Yapuwa
Milk wastage due to power blackouts will now be a thing of the past for Mangunda Milk Bulking Group in Thyolo District as the grouping has received K107 million grant from Transforming Agriculture through Diversification and Entrepreneurship (TRADE) Programme to buy a solar power equipment.
Speaking after receiving the cheque on Friday at Thyolo District Council, Mangunda Milk Bulking Group Treasurer, Ellias Piringu, said the group loses K5 million monthly through rotten milk because of intermittent power supply at the bulking centre.
\”We are grateful to TRADE Programme for giving us this grant to procure a solar powered system as well as mount a water tank.
\”We always throw away milk because it is rotten due to power blackouts resulting in us losing a lot of money. The amount of milk that gets rotten every month is over K5 million,\” said Piringu.
He hailed TRADE Programme for the gesture and appealed to other cooperatives to take advantage of the grants being given to improve their livelihoods.
District Commissioner for Thyolo, Hudson Kuphanga, urged the group to use the money for its intended purpose instead of directing the money to things that are not helpful.
\”When there is a group, you find that there are lots of problems due to management issues. This is huge sum of money going to a village group. As such, they should be very vigilant on how they can use such money.
“They should use it for the intended purpose so that they can be pioneers who will be able to give advice to other groups on how they are managing the funds,\” said Kuphanga.
Kuphanga, therefore, called upon young people in the district to mobilise themselves, form groups and apply for grants in order to uplift their lives.
TRADE Programme Grant Management Specialist, Andrew Chidothe, said they have managed to give out a total of K650 million to a number of cooperatives across the country.
He said the key issue is about profit and running cooperatives as business and that needs proper equipment to materialise.
\”If a cooperative does not have enough power but has a lot of milk like the case in Thyolo, a lot of milk goes bad as such they will not be able to make profits and have access on the market.
\”TRADE is intervening to make sure they have access to equipment so that they can be able to sustain themselves as cooperatives as well reaching out to other markets for their produce,\” said Chidothe.
