Story - The Back Office Where Scovia Is Changing Lives

Writer- Melissa Kyeyune | NGO- Water For People | Country- Uganda | SDG- Goal 6, Clean Water and Sanitation | Year- 2017 |

SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation | It is 4:30 pm in the Soroti Branch of Post Bank. In the front office, a wife reminds her husband of their surname as he fills in a form, while a backpacking tourist explains to a clerk that he has to be in Tanzania the next morning. The lines are long and the conversations are many. But tucked away behind the main building is the more tranquil ‘Loans Section’.

Here, clients bow their heads in concentration, quietly looking over forms explaining the loan they are about to take out. Most are farmers from the surrounding villages. They speak in lowered voices, asking the woman with a warm smile what the questions mean. Scovia Akoth, the Group Lending Credit Officer is always ready to answer any query, and she loves her job.

“I used to work in the front office and then I was moved here. I love it here in the Loans Section, and I am proud of what we do for people,” Scovia says. As Scovia was moving her desk from the front office to the Loans Section of Post Bank, Water For People was looking for a financial institution that could be an effective partner in their Sanitation As A Business (SAAB) approach. Post Bank, which was already giving out what is known as WASH loans, was the most obvious choice of partner.

“A WASH loan has a condition that the money goes towards a sanitation facility in the applicant’s household,” Scovia explains.

Under Water For People’s SAAB approach, the client must use this WASH loan to pay a community mason to build improved sanitation facilities at their home, the most popular of which are latrines fitted with sato pans which keep out bad smells and flies.

“However, we do not give them the loan money all at once, we do it in installments. We only give them the next installment once a different section of their sanitation facility is completed,” Scovia says. On what most of her clientele looks like, Scovia smiles widely and says they are mostly women. This is partly due to another WASH loan condition that states that the applicant must be a part of a savings group. In Soroti district, saving groups are made up mostly of women, and so the matriarchs of households apply for these loans on behalf of their husbands and families.

“These women need to come with a recommendation from their savings group and they have to describe to us in detail, what sanitation structure they are going to build using the money.”

According to many community members, the interest rates on the WASH loan are much more manageable than the rates they pay in the savings groups, the former being 1.14% and the latter being 10%.

One challenge still experienced by Post Bank in implementing the SAAB approach with Water For People, is the community’s mistrust of big commercial banks.

“A lot of people still fear borrowing from banks like us. This is because they hear rumours of land and livestock being taken away when someone does not pay on time.”

In response to this, Water For People also engages with local government leaders such as Martin Eyura, the District Health Inspector to sensitize people about loans. He explains how he engages the community.

“We ask people if they have never borrowed anything in their lives. We ask them, ‘Isn’t there something you borrow for home from time to time?’ People reply that they borrow salt and water. We tell them it is the same principle with money. You can borrow but have a plan for paying it back. Moreover, we have also ensured that the bank gets into contact with the mason, and they advise each other on how to help the client.”

Under the SAAB approach, the local government leaders have the added roles of creating demand for sanitation products, regulating the market, building capacity among village health teams among other duties.

Scovia herself always tells the loan applicant this: “We want to see you succeed. Loans are for helping, not taking away.”

Judging by the number of people walking into that back office to get a WASH loan, and then coming back to excitedly describe their new smell-free latrine, Scovia’s back office is truly changing lives.

Organization website: https://www.waterforpeople.org/where-we-work/uganda