By Kebba Jeffang
The Jarumeh Koto Visaca Bank has been dysfunctional for quite a while and the Visaca Apex has recommended that a new 
management committee be elected to replace the existing one.
Alhaji Muhammed Sawaneh, General Manager of Visaca Apex said this to Foroyaa on Thursday, January 07, 2016. According to him, the aim of removing the current executive of the micro finance bank is to bring it back to normalcy.
Foroyaa has been receiving complaints raised by some people from the said village that they are not able to send monies through transfer, depositing or getting loans; services that the Visaca used to provide before.
However, Mr. Sawanneh said their mandate is to act as long term technical partners for the Visacas, including the Jarumeh Koto Visaca which serves a cluster of villages. He said it is part of the practice that globally, Visacas are user owned, user managed and user financed micro finance institutions.
“The villagers themselves own the Visaca; they define the rules relating to visaca. They select their own management committee and cashiers who are responsible for managing its day to day affairs. So our role is to provide technical services such as training, auditing etc. We only recommend but we cannot enforce because we have no role in running a Visaca,” he stated.
Mr Sawaneh explained that Jarumeh Koto Visaca has a problem of governance because the management committee members that were there were not performing. He said they recommended that that executive should be removed but one of them refused to hand over power.
“So for us we cannot resolve that problem; the general assembly is at the village, they select them and they can remove them not the Apex body. Unfortunately, the village is not ready to do that so we are helpless,” said the General Manager of Visaca Apex Sawaneh.
He assured that once the village has a new executive, his office will do the training and provide them with stationeries but as long as the situation remains like this they are helpless.
