Raphael Magyezi, the Minister of Local Government
Government has no plans to create new parishes in order to effectively implement the Parish Development Model (PDM), Raphael Magyezi, the Minister of Local Government, has revealed.
He however says modalities are being discussed on whether to increase some of the SACCOs whose populations are higher than others.
He made the revelation while appearing before Parliament’s Public Service and Local Government Committee, during the consideration of the 2026/27 ministerial policy statement for the Ministry of Local Government, where he was responding to questions on how Government is resolving the discrepancies in various geographical and population sizes of Parishes.
“Now, for the big parishes, we are not going to create smaller parishes so that each one gets. The position of Government is the big parishes will get relatively more money than the smaller parishes,” Magyezi said, adding that they’re developing a formula to allocate PDM money based on population and the rate of subsistence.
This followed a question raised by Pius Wakabi, Vice Chairperson, Committee on Public Service and Local Government who noted, “You are aware that we have some parishes which are so big, even bigger than some sub-counties. Some parishes have like 17 villages, 15 villages, yet others have four villages, but they get the same amount of money. So, I don’t know what is your plan basing on that.”
The Minister defended Government’s position arguing that some parishes may have many people, but many of them maybe already wealthy and out of subsistence economy.
He said they are working with Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) to determine the rate of subsistence in some of the SACCOs.
“So, we are working with UBOS to determine the rate of subsistence of each parish. And that will help us to know, do we put this parish in category one of UGX100 million, two of UGX200 million, three of UGX300M, we are still working on that. Now, under the budget of 2026/27, we are maintaining each parish will continue to get UGX100Million until we agree on that formula that encompasses the bigger parishes with the bigger rates of subsistence,” he said.
