| dc.description.abstract | Given that majority of the Kenyans are below the poverty line, the high interest rate
of borrowing from our banks and slow economic growth rate the Co-operatives
movements are seen to be supporting the welfare of almost 70/0 of the developments
done by the Mwananch/ The Co-operatives are fully autonomous and the members
have full control of the running of the Society. A CMC is normally elected by the
members in an annual AGM and are charged with control of day-to-day running of the
Society.
We have seen a number of them going down due to mis-management by the people in
charge of the societies. This raises the question of how well the co-operatives are
managedgiven that they have been liberalized and have the full mandate to run their
ownaffairs. The Co-operative Act formed in Parliament serves regulates or provides a
framework within which Co-operative movements can operate safely but does not have
direct control of the Society's affairs.
Today, I want to believe that very few of these Society's have thought that
computerization can be a solution to most of the above problems. There is also an
unmet need in many organizations for the development of customized software and
database systems. Majority of them are still processing information manually. Some of
the Systems already developed and in use are too expensive to purchase, don't meet
users needs or they are under utilized by the users.
Shujaa Savings and Credit Society Ltd is a Co-operative Society with 8 insurance
companies coming together to form it. It has rented an office in town and employed a
ull time Bookkeeper to do bookkeeping and accounting functions of the Society. Shujaa
currently has a Pentium III computer and an Epson LQ 2170 printer, which is under
utilized. Some records are kept in spreadsheet files but this has not maximized the
ROI. Efforts to get a computerized system have not been successful for the last two
years. This is either because of low quality software, which is quite cheap but does not
have rich functionality or too expensive and exceeding the budget allocation.
Sacco Information system has been developed to address the needs of Shujaa Cooperative
movement. The systems addresses various problems especially in the loaning
procedures - excessive loaning to certain members, loss of income due to poor
recovery, bouncing of loan cheques due to lack of bank reconciliation and massive
withdrawal due to red tape by CMCofficials. | en |
