I have always interested myself in the Parish Development Model (PDM) because it is the best way to propel our communities to self-sustainable standards.
However, I find it quite irritating that many experts that get a chance to speak about PDM come up with technical explanations on how the population can tap into the PDM. They reason using complex data and statistics that only a handful can comprehend. I find this to be sheer idealism.
To imagine that such statistical info can be used across the country to pull the 39 per cent of Uganda’s population out of their subsistence lifestyle into the money economy is wishful thinking at best.
In my experience, I would root for a more pragmatic approach that is realistically feasible. At the least, a parish consists of about 1,000 households which, if broken down, means each would get just Shs 100,000 of the budgeted Shs 100m for every parish this year.
Granted, not every household will benefit this coming financial year and it is a rotational financial rescue. However, it would still be a waste to give a household Shs 1m when its members are not ambitious or have never experienced what it takes to multiply resources.
So, government should moot the idea to identify the economic drivers in a particular community and use them to lift up others. These are mostly bigtime employers, mostly farmers, in a parish who need a little financial push from government to transform the livelihoods of their communities.
For instance, in a coffee-farming community, investing the Shs 100m PDM cash in a local investor with a huller would greatly uplift households by subsidizing costs of coffee hulling and thereby create more employment opportunities instead of breaking down this figure to suit every household. In this case, government can use the well-established LC system to also register households within the parish and identify the beneficiaries of the huller and avoid the threat of outsiders taking advantage. Already, there are national IDs to identify people; so, having area residents directly benefitting from a business initiative would be easy.
It also creates a sense of loyalty and responsibility for everyone involved to follow up the money chain and ensure nothing goes to waste.
Also, it is easier to ask for accountability from an established entity and extremely difficult from hundreds of households. I do appreciate the fact that the idea behind PDM is to have households determine what they need but in taking the government to the people, it remains the state’s mandate to drive the transformation agenda.
Reaching out to every household may take the country years to achieve the PDM goals yet if we can identify and start with a promising local investor or development group in every parish, many people would get employment and can learn the money economy as a unit.
And this is not an isolated notion. I experienced it during my stay in the Zambian town of Chipata where I learnt that in the eighties, then president Kenneth Kaunda identified outstanding individuals in business and had government help them with a financial boost.
Back then, Chipata was known to be a poor area that depended on cotton and maize growing but the massive injection of funds by individuals greatly redeemed it from poverty because it encouraged the are population to be productive. This approach had a trickle-down effect on the communities. today, it is the fastest-growing city in Zambia.
I see similarities between Chipata and communities of Butambala where a lot of ginger is grown but they lack processing capabilities. The same can be said of the many maize-growing areas across the country that lack mills or drying facilities to process it instead of taking to Kampala.
