Players in the agriculture sector have expressed disgust over the move by government to continue paying agriculture extension workers without allocating money to facilitate implementation of extension services in the budget for the 2023/24 financial year.
Speaking at a post-budget meeting on Thursday in which the Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC) was releasing a report of their assessment of the FY2023/24 agro-industrialization programme budget towards provision of agricultural extension, Lawrence Kasenge who heads the agriculture desk in the Ministry of Finance revealed extension services were not budgeted for pending an audit by the Auditor General.
Overall, Kasenge says the agro-industrialization budget has increased over the years from 1 trillion shillings in FY2019/20 to 1.8trillion in FY2023/24, but grants to local governments were cut due to low economic growth. He said money will be allocated to operationalization of extension services once the audit is done to establish the gap within the services and if there is value for money.
However Dr Brain Sserunjogi, a Research Fellow at EPRC revealed at the meeting that the budget priorities for the new financial year has among others implementing the four-acre model which is part of the Parish Development Model (PDM) that government is currently pushing in all sectors, increasing farmers’ resilience, technology adoption and increasing agricultural commercialization among others.
To him, agricultural extension services are key to implementing all the priorities that government intends to do.
Commenting, the LC 5 CHairperson of Kabarole District Richard Rwabuhinga expressed worry that the 1.1trillion shillings allocated to the parish development model may go to waste like the wages paid to extension workers but not given a coin to do their work.
In Kabarole for instance, he says 5.3billion shillings PDM money has already been provided and is being accessed by people through commercial banks.
He also noted that as a practitioner in the local government, he has realized that the biggest chunk of money sent to local governments is instead spent at the center. He also quotes a 2017 study that three trillion shillings of the Local Government money remains at the center.
For her part, Agnes Kirabo, a food rights advocate who heads an NGO Food Rights Alliance urged government to quickly allocate money to implementation of extension services even as the budget has already been passed.
Kirabo says it happened in 2016 when government allocated 10billion shillings for agriculture extension after the budget had been read. She observed that extension workers are too few for their contribution to be felt.
When this was put to Dr Henry Opolot, the Commissioner Extension Services in the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal, Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) he acknowledged the fact that extension workers are few, still way below 5,000 that they target to hire.
Responding to concerns of how extension workers who are being paid a salary will continue working without funds, he said there is project money provided by donors in some areas that can be used to facilitate them.
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