Members of Parliament have demanded for a timely appraisal of the Agriculture Cluster Development Project being implemented under the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries.
The project that was rolled out in 2019 is a 6-year project intended to empower farmers to demand and access critical inputs for intensification of production with a resultant increase in marketable volumes to improve income and food security.
Jonathan Odur, the Erute South MP in Lira District today raised it on the floor as a matter of national importance, re-echoing farmers’ displeasure of prolonged non-payment for their services of supplying inputs.
Odur described that hundreds of farmers who supplied cassava cuttings from the district and neighbouring Alebtong, Dokolo and Kaberamaido among other have since 2021 not been paid by the Ministry of Agriculture.
His counterpart Solomon Silwany, the MP representing Bukooli County Central also voiced a concern that Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture should interest itself and investigate the Ministry over rampant bureaucracies leading to non-absorption of funds.
This prompted the Deputy Speaker Anita Among to direct Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture to expeditiously investigate claims of non-payment and under absorption of funds under the project.
Among expressed disappointed that while agriculture is the backbone of the country, non- payment of farmers causes a gap in the economy.
The 529.3 billion World Bank funded project being implemented across over 24 districts of Uganda targeting 378 farmer groups is to raise on-farm productivity, production, and marketable volumes of selected agricultural commodities.
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