State Minister for Planning, David Bahati
A section of MPs have called for the suspension of Emyooga program until Government clarifies on the way they select the beneficiaries.
This is after State Minister for Planning, David Bahati Wednesday briefed Parliament on the progress of the program.
It should be noted that Cabinet approved a proposal on the “Presidential initiative on Wealth and Job Creation-Emyooga” ‘on 19th August, 2019 to facilitate socio-economic transformation of households from the subsistence to money economy and market oriented production in line with the NRM Manifesto. President Yoweri Museveni used the Emyooga initiative to his advantage in the recently concluded Presidential elections.
Bahati revealed that Finance Ministry provided Shs30 billion in the FY 2019120 to Microfinance Support Centre (MSC) towards implementation of the EMYOOGA programme and this FY 2020121, Shs210 billion has been provided.
“This Quarter, Shs140 billion has already been disbursed to MSC for programme implementation,” he said.
He said 29,747 parish Associations have so far been formed countrywide to benefit from the program.
“Under this phase, at least 21,963 parish Associations have been validated by MSC in 47 districts out of which the company has so far facilitated the formal registration of 14,416 parish groups with the respective Local Governments. Furthermore, The registration process for 893 apex Constituency SACCOS in 59 Constituencies with the Registrar of Cooperatives as well as training of SACCO leaders is in advanced stages,” he said.
He requested for additional budget allocation to the EMYOOGA programme in FY 2021 totaling Shs35 billion to facilitate the scaling up of the programme to cover the new 47 Constituencies and support the activities of the district EMYOOGA taskforces
However, MPs led by the Leader of Opposition, Betty Aol Ocan criticized government for not having a correct method to run this program.
Aol said that this money was politicized and used by the people in charge to extort money from beneficiaries for them to qualify to access Emyoga.
Agago District Woman MP, Franca Akello questioned why some constituencies were not given their share of Emyooga funds.
Other MPs including Dokolo County MP, Cecilia Ogwal and Oyam district woman MP, Santa Alum also called for the suspension of the program.
However, Bahati rejected claims that government is collecting money from the beneficiaries before accessing the funds.
He said that it’s the groups that asked for subscription fee from the Emyooga groups.
