Parish development model is the magic bullet to unemployment in Uganda, says Museveni

President Museveni has described as the magic bullet to the problem of unemployment in Uganda, the newly introduced Parish development model program.

Unemployment is a time bomb for Uganda with the unemployment rate being at 2.44% according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics.

To this, a number of Ugandans, especially youths who make the biggest percentage of the population are jobless.

However, addressing the nation during the International Labour day celebrations at Kololo independence grounds, Museveni said if well implemented, the Parish development model is capable of turning the tables and create jobs for as many as 50 million Ugandans.

“Where this program has already taken place, you find a family employs like 15 people in an enterprise of one acre. Uganda has 43 million people and if you take an average of five people in a home and nine million families. Let us assume five million of them have land. If each one of these five million listens to our message and goes into  small scale commercial farming with the best calculation, even if he employs 10 people each, that is 50 million jobs,” Museveni said.

“We will have more jobs than population. If we do this, we shall have so many jobs and import labour from other countries.”

The president said with 50 million people employed in the agricultural sector directly, many others would also benefit through processing of the produce but also through other sectors like transport of the products.

“Processing will create more jobs in factories and transport to take goods to market. All sectors will expand. Take this idea of the Parish development model  as very important and we can change Uganda.”

Earlier programs

Museveni boasted that only the current NRM government has made it a point to ensure it deliberately help its citizens get out of poverty.

“Before our time, no government was giving money to the people to get out of poverty. Getting out of poverty was everyone's private business. Government would only bring peace. If you wanted to get out of poverty,  that was your own private issue,”Musevenisaid.

“However, we (NRM) have been giving money (to citizens ) since the time of Entandikwa, then prosperity for all... But all this time, the responsibility was being taken by government officials. That was where the confusion started from.”

The president however said he was happy that Operation Wealth Creation helped a lot in ensuring people get out of poverty.

He stated that the program helped percentages of people involved in subsistence production drop from 68 when OWC started to 39.

“That’s why you hear substance production has dropped from 68% to 39%.That means Operation Wealth Creation (OWC) did some work but there is still some work to do. The work done by OWC has led to huge increase in production of coffee from 2 million to 8 million bags and  earnings from 400million dollars  to 800 million dollars per year.”

Museveni said with the coming of the parish development model on board, many people are going to get employed and also help in fighting poverty.

Parish dev't model

According to government, the parish development model will see development activities planned for and executed in parishes as the lowest level unit  for extending services to the population.

To this, members of the public, especially those in agriculture will be required to form saccos through which government will inject money that they will use to inject into their projects.