Social Impact Assessment of Microfinance Programmes - weman

Therefore, staff members try their utmost to meet their loan and recovery targets.
However, this approach does have an affect on NRSP’s mandate of focusing on the
poorer community segments, as many borrowers are not actually the poor in their
respective communities. Some of the team members further added that the poorest strata
were not prepared to take the risk of attaining loans as they did not have the assets to
recoup in case of an emergency or other losses during business. 1
In the recent programme history, there have been very few dropouts in the Credit
Programme process. Except for a few randomly reported cases in the beginning of the
programme, COs members are mostly familiar with each other and do not identify those
borrowers who have probability of leaving in the middle of the loan cycle due to the
social collateral approach. Similar feedback was received during the clients assessment
discussions during this research.
7.1.10 Characteristics of credit staff
The model recognizes the importance of on-the-job training and monitoring to build staff
capacity. The Field Workers are the front line workers responsible for maintaining close
contact with the COs and their members. This requires a large number of honest and
responsible Field Workers who can meet all the COs and their members. The Field
Worker must be a local, trustworthy person. The Credit Officer must guide the Field
Workers. The SCO must be able to train and monitor a large cadre of Field Workers and
Credit Officers. In the new model, once a Social Organizer helps people to form a CO,
and a credit request is initiated, the credit process from that point on is in the hands of the
Credit Officer and the CO and its members. This means that the Social Organizer is free
to concentrate on other activities, including health and education, training and natural
resource management, as the CO requires.
7.1.11 Village Branches (VB)
In order to establish frequent contact with community members, one to two room village
branches have been formed at accessible locations, typically at the centre of one or more
Union Councils. The location and number of Village Branches in a Union Council is
determined by the size and proximity of the potential clientele. The VB is the smallest
administrative unit responsible for coordinating with the COs and their members on a
daily basis. It is also a recovery collection hub. The Field Worker and the Credit Officer
keep the VB open during office hours according to a fixed schedule, posted in the office.
According to the schedule, the Field Worker allocates time for CO meetings, recovery
follow-up, and appraisals and recovery collection. The Credit Officer monitors the
performance of the Field Worker through surprise visits and checking of all the records
etc. The SCO arranges periodic ‘surprise visits’ to ensure proper office procedures and
compliance with the agreed schedule.
1 Study consultant’s Interviews with General Manager Micro-Finance and Entrepreneur Development
Programme and Credit team District Attock
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