WAD wants to produce money bags for commercial banks

The Women's Action for Development (WAD) wants to start producing money bags for local commercial banks. WAD, an organisation that promotes and trains the poor rural women in income generating projects, said it has approached commercial banks with the proposal to manufacture the money bags. Currently, various women projects under the auspices of WAD, manufacture linen shopping bags. De Klerk said these women have sold more than 130 000 linen shopping bags. The bags have been sold through shops that have agreed to stock and support the project. One of these shops is the Pick 'n Pay Model in Windhoek.

This week two institutions, Nedbank Namibia and Old Mutual Namibia, pledged to support WAD's linen bag project. “[The two institutions] are scheduled to present sponsorship to kick-start the bank linen money bag project and to strengthen the existing environmentally-friendly linen shopping bag project,” said De Klerk. De Klerk said South African and Namibian companies could equally do more to complement the income of the poor, in small but meaningful ways, to ensure that those families have food on their tables everyday. She said this can be done by exploring ways in which poor people can make an income.

“One such example is to refrain from importing the simplest of needlework articles which can effortlessly be produced by talented Namibians and in particular by impoverished women living in the rural areas, whom WAD has trained to produce quality products, and where close to 70% of Namibians live,” said de Klerk.
She berated the private sector saying “it would appear as if it is suffering from a colonial era hangover”.

“The “import syndrome”, which is still plaguing Namibian businesses, 16 years after Namibia gained its independence, and against which WAD has ever so often cautioned, simply cannot be shaken off. If this present situation, which I wish to elaborate on again, is to prevail unabated it will be a case of business colonisation continuing untouched in an independent Namibia,” said de Klerk.