Vice President Inonge Wina has urged the Ministry of Gender to conduct an impact evaluation to determine the effectiveness of the GEWEL Project.
Mrs. Wina has expressed willingness to support the idea of providing more finances for the continuation of the GEWEL programme so that more vulnerable women and girls could have access for livelihood support and secondary school education, respectively.
She said this when the World Bank Team paid a Courtesy Call on her. The team included Ina-Marlene Ruthenberg Country Manager for Zambia, Sarah Coll Black the Task Team Leader for Girls Education and Women’s Empowerment and Livelihoods’ Support (GEWEL) Project in the company of Emma Hobson also working on the GEWEL project.
The World Bank Team is in the Country to hold technical meetings with Government over possible Additional Financing for the GEWEL Project after the current agreement comes to an end in September, 2020.
Under the current GEWEL agreement worth US$65 million, the project is on track to achieve its Project Development Objectives (PDO); progress towards the PDO and implementation progress has been rated as Satisfactory for the last year.
Component one of the Project is Support to Women’s Livelihoods (SWL) whose target is to support 75,000 women with training, a productive grant, savings and mentoring. To date, 12,748 beneficiaries have received full SWL package and 21,375 beneficiaries await the grant.
An additional 45,000 women will be selected from Social Cash Transfer (SCT) households in mid-2019.
Component two of the project is Keeping Girls in School (KGS) whose target is to pay school fees for 14,000 vulnerable girls from SCT households.
To date school fees have been paid for 16,239 female secondary school students in 16 districts across 10 provinces. KGS is expanding to an additional 11 new districts to support 9,000 more girls. A total of 25,239 girls are expected to benefit under the project surpassing the initial project target of 14,000 girls.
Further, investments have been made in payment systems, management information systems, and financial management.
The GEWEL project is contributing towards Government’s aim of substantially scaling up pro-poor spending to combat poverty and inequality as set out in the 7NDP.
This is according to a statement issued to the media by Permanent Secretary Administration in the office of the Vice President Stephen Mwansa.
This is another one who is enjoying taxpayers funds even though she is too sick and old to work but she carries on drawing salaries so she can be flying around to India for treatment.