By Amadou Jadama
Reliance Financial Services (RFS) in partnership with the the Kanifing Municipal Council yesterday launched a D100 million fund for the women of the municipality.
At a ceremony at KMC conference hall yesterday, RFS’ chief financial officer handed over a dummy cheque for the Reliance Dollel Jigeen Kanifing Municipality Fund to the KMC deputy mayor.
Addressing the meeting, RFS head of operations, Momodou Joof said: “Today we came here to officially launch the 100 million dalasis we intend to provide as working capital for loans to women residing in KMC.
“We have seen that women are significant players in pushing the economy of the country. They need an opportunity like this. One of the challenges they are facing is limited access to finance.
So Reliance as a micro-finance institution working with women directly, find it necessary to come up with a programme that will address those with limited access to finance.
“We came here to launch it in partnership with KMC. KMC’s involvement is because they are close to the communities through their ward councillors and they know them more than us.
Our aim is to reach out to every woman in KMC. So it is an opportunity for them to take us to the women to help us so that we can reach our target of 10,000 women within the next two years.”
Deputy Mayor Musa Bah reiterated that women have a key role in the development of KMC and “therefore, they should be empowered and that is why we came with this initiative, together with our mayor Talib Bensouda and the women’s representative Aja Binneh Marong and we are empowered by Reliance Financial Services.”
