Older persons have been encouraged to form groups and engage in income generating projects to secure their lives.

Ibanda Municipality Councilor Leonard Ford Karera says there is no reason for energetic old people to depend on children when they can do businesses and provide for themselves.

Karera was today sensitising Kigarama ward, Bisheshe Division older persons, aged between 60 and 79 years, about the government’s special enterprise grant for older persons programme. He said they were still strong at this age to do projects like goat rearing, vegetable growing, piggery and poultry to ensure a stable source of income to lead good lives.

He explained that the government will, however, give the grants to only those organised in groups of five to 10 members each whereby each beneficiary will gets Shs.1M grant from the government to start up income generating initiatives.

Amina Mbabazi, the Ibanda Municipality publicity older persons’ publicity secretary said the government doesn’t want to first wait for them to become weak to start giving the money through the Social Assistance Grant for Empowerment (SAGE) welfare fund.