A section of lawmakers have expressed mixed reactions over the proposal by Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) to halt the roll out of the Parish Development Model due to absence of data to establish the actual number of beneficiaries.
While addressing the press briefing in Kampala this week, Dr. Chris Mukiza, UBOS Executive Director, said that as much as UBOS was supposed to collect and analyse data to inform all other pillars of the Parish Development Model but these activities weren’t carried out, which calls for the halting of the program.
Although Godfrey Onzima, Chairperson Parliament’s Committee of Public Service and Local Government admitted that Government wasn’t prepared to implement the PDM, funds for the implementation of the Program have already been approved and released by Government and all that needs to be done is speed up the activities so that all the seven pillars move alongside each other.
He said, “Right now we can’t say we halt the implementation of this program because as I talk now, the program is already on, parish chiefs have already been recruited, in fact last financial year Shs17m was rolled out. I think what we need to do, each of those people in charge of those pillars should do their work. I think the best we should do is to increase more effort on areas that are lagging behind so that we are at per.”
Onzima cautioned that if other pillars are left to operate at a higher level and the rest are left to operate at a lower level, then this would affect the success of the PDM.
Onzima admitted that there is need to do some activities more before the PDM money is rolled out and the enterprise groups should have been prepared to receive the money.
“The report by UBOS to identify the particular target group earlier before this money went to the community such that these kind of people are trained. The challenge we are experiencing right now is that everyone wants to get this money and yet this money was meant to protect those particular groups of people who are more vulnerable in the community and haven’t had chance to access any capital to start business. There has been scramble that the money is huge, so everyone thinks they are supposed to eat,” said Onzima.
Butambala County’s Muwanga Kivumbi described the latest remarks from UBOS as akin to the chickens coming back home to rest, saying that the Opposition warned Government over the lack of preparedness to implement the PDM, especially when the Ministry of Finance came to Parliament requesting for Shs400m but there was no evidence tabled before the Budget Committee to prove Government’s preparedness to implement the PDM.
He said, “The first tool we need to have is pool of data who are the actual numbers, homes and personalities, that wasn’t done and remember we don’t have population census we are depending on surveys which are highly sampled at random and we needed to do a more detailed data gathering and analysis to arrive at the actual and we gave them Shs200Bn to specifically do that.”
Kivumbi who doubles as Shadow Finance Minister said that it doesn’t need to take UBOS to alert the country because from the word go, the President was simply interested in launching the PDM, a decision he says was reactionary and the usual scripted way of NRM doing things, they are never prepared
“Lack of access to affordable credit for development is a critical need as of yesterday, but the question is, who needs credit. Why you are having this challenge is that you are addressing already poor people whom you want to lift out of poverty into the money economy, they are failing to know who these people are and where they are. The first thing you just don’t go and avail money,” explained Kivumbi.
In the 2022/2023 Financial Year, Government allocated Shs1.05Trn for PDM and each parish is expected to get Shs100M.
