The other side of DKM
Customers of DKM Diamond Microfinance Limited are anxiously waiting for the payment of their locked-up deposits, but in the midst of the quagmire, some of them are counting their gains from the company.
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From Sunyani in the Brong Ahafo Region, Tamale in the Northern Region, Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region, and Nandom in the Upper West Region, the ‘gainers’ in the DKM financial meltdown say they have no regrets in doing business with the company.
Many of them have built houses, bought vehicles, paid school fees and established their own businesses with the gains made from DKM.
Even those who did not benefit personally are pointing at the many development projects initiated by DKM as colossal communal gains made from the company, branding it as an agent of poverty alleviation and a development bridge between the North and the South.
Building projects
Cletus Zume, the Executive Director of the Centre for Women Opportunities, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Tamale, currently has a deposit of GH¢60,000 with DKM.
With an interest rate of 30 per cent per quarter, he had high hopes of hitting a jackpot upon the maturity of his deposit in May 2015, but two days before his money was due, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) intervened, dashing all his hopes.
That notwithstanding, he is a happy man, beaming with smiles; since 2013 when he started business with DKM with a deposit of GH¢10,000, which he describes as “idle money”, Cletus has made about GH¢100,000 in profit before the BoG’s intervention.
“The way the thing happened, it’s paining me; like by now, I would have formed a political party to wrest power. I was not perturbed. After all, I’ve benefited,” he submits.
Cletus says he used his gains from DKM to partly finance a building project in Tamale, and the construction of a fence wall around his old house, something he could not do in 10 years.
When the husband of Madam Akua Sekyebea died a few years ago, the future seemed shaky for the Sunyani-based teacher, but when she discovered DKM in 2013, life became stable.
With her accrued profit, she managed to raise a building project her late husband left behind to roofing level before the BoG intervened.
“If I say I didn’t benefit, I’m lying. It has benefited me a lot,” she says.
School fees
Unlike Cletus and Madam Sekyebea, Bayor Evans Geyfiri, a resident of Bolgatanga, could not undertake his dream project of establishing a school from his DKM gains.
Just as he mobilised building materials to site to begin the project, the BoG posted a “Stop Work” notice on the operations of DKM.
Nevertheless, Evans used substantial part of his gains to pay his child’s school fees and funded his own education at the University of Cape Coast.
But now, with no DKM to lean on, the Level 400 Statistics student is racking his brain to find a methodology to raise funds for his education.
Madam Gladys Mwinsigteng is a Senior Library Assistant at the University for Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale.
As a widow, it had been a huge challenge for her to pay the school fees of her three children.
But finding a ‘husband’ in DKM in 2013 enabled her to overcome that challenge with ease.
“I will not deny the fact that DKM helped me; it has helped me a lot. It is just that this unfortunate thing happened and we are all suffering. But all the same, I’ve benefited,” she says.
Trust in DKM
At various times, DKM offered as high as 150 , 80 and 50 per cent interest rates per quarter, rates that financial analysts describe as unrealistic.
Nevertheless, many customers of DKM, even the well -educated and enlightened, preferred risk to caution.
“You could realise that he’s into gold business; he’s into transport, and you can see his buses around. So I will not doubt what he’s doing. And what is puzzling me is that I don’t think customers complained of not receiving their money,” Cletus says.
Evans shares a similar opinion, saying, “Since 2013, he has paid throughout until 2015; so how will I be skeptical?”
Madam Gladys is unfazed by the current developments and she does not wish to divorce DKM in the circumstances.
“I always say that if DKM should come back on condition that they pay me my principal, I will go with them,” she says.
Development initiatives
Apart from counting their personal gains, many customers of DKM are also grateful to the company for its corporate social responsibility initiatives that have impacted greatly on many lives.
According to Madam Gladys, the road from Nandom to her village, Kobile, was “very horrible”, and because of that people refused to respond to emergency calls from the village, especially in the night.
“But as of now, the way DKM has levelled that road; in fact, that one alone is a credit, and because of that, at times, I feel my money is not wasted because what I have with DKM cannot work on that road. So I feel happy because of that,” she submits.
Travelling from Wa to Nandom is quite jolly only up to Jirapa because of the good nature of the road, but beyond Jirapa, the road is bad.
However, upon entering Nandom, the signature of DKM is very bold in the long stretches of road and the many bridges the company has constructed to ease the difficulty of using the hitherto terrible roads, especially during the rainy season.
Prior to 2015, the inhabitants of Bilegang, a village near Nandom, were cut off from the district capital anytime it rained but DKM has fixed that road.
“But for DKM, we would not have a road,” an excited chief of Bilegang, Naa James Nyenaa, remarks.
The road from Nandom to Kogle, another nearby village, was also bad until DKM levelled it.
The Assembly Member for Nandom West Electoral Area, Jacob Bonyine, says “people are praising him (DKM) for the job that he did; actually, some of us are weeping because he did a very good job for some of us in Nandom here”.
