Low Income Employees Micro Business Management Strategies And Livelihood: A Case Of Ubungo Municipal Council

ABSTRACT

The study has aimed to examine low income employee‟s micro business management strategies and livelihood in Ubungo Municipal Council.The study specifically has focused on determining the typical livelihood strategies performed by low income employees, assess the micro business activities‟ undertaken by low income employees, assess institutional and managerial support from Municipal to enhance micro business management and improvement of their livelihood and challenges facing low income employees when searching and managing alternative sources of income generating activities. A cross sectional research design was adopted; sample sizes of 100 respondents were obtained through purposive and non-purposive sampling techniques. The study used both quantitative and qualitative methods approaches. Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) and Microsoft Excel (Ms Excel) were used to analyze data. Data revealed that the majority of employees depends on VICOBA and own savings (46%) and (25%) respectively as sources of capital to establish micro business as well as livelihood strategy to cope with small salary to meet family financial obligations. It was found that majority of employees engaged in micro business activities, particularly agribusiness sector (42%) like home gardening, poultry keeping and livestock rearing include cows and goats. Cognizant, the study found that majority of low income employees (58%) have poor managerial ability to run micro business activities. About 24% stated that, their employer had inadequate budget for training programs related to business management and 18% mentioned lack of a clear organization policy on supporting low income earners livelihoods. This study found out challenges that impede livelihood adaptation to employees, 51% of the respondent stated that low salary to save and invest is the challenge that facing low income employees at UMC. Other (21%) reported about low capital as bottleneck to develop and 14% of the respondent mentioned unreliable energy as the challenge that is facing vii low income employees. Their livelihoods are at risks as they don‟t have enough salary/savings and limited sources of income from secondary economic activities. The study also revealed that, both vulnerability for low income earners to fall into poverty is caused by limited capital and business environment which affects their competitive edge in the market, and poor business supervision due to limited time.