Uganda not yet ready for Parish Development  Model roll out, says UBOS

The Uganda Bureau of Statistics(UBOS) has revealed that the country is not yet ready to ensure roll out of the Parish Development Model.

“We are supposed to have data that will inform all other pillars of the Parish Development Model. We are going to household and ask the economic activity they are involved in, whether they make money or not etc. These are the real survey questions we survey during the data collection exercise for PDM. From there we shall use our statistical expertise to find out those who fall in subsistence production and those who don’t. We shall then tell government that those involved in agriculture, fishing etc are this and that,” UBOS Executive Director, Dr. Chris Mukiza said on Tuesday.

“The saccos are supposed to be formed following this data and for similar enterprises and not just registering. That’s why we want to be careful. We must have information to inform the implementation of the program but some areas have not yet started data collection.”

UBOS came up with the Parish Development Model Information System (PDMIS) to generate parish registers of households and communities to enable real time access to information, flexible access to re-correct errors and a strong location GPRs to help monitor the progress in the country-side, thereby enabling the quick and reliable exchange of information.

However, according to Dr.Mukiza, as things currently stand, they wouldn’t advise government to roll out the Parish Development Model program now since data to be used to indicate who should benefit from the program is not yet available.

He insisted that whereas the exercise to collect the data kicked off more than a month ago, in many areas the exercise has not yet started.

“We should have finished in 14 days when we started on June 10. We thought all districts had the money, only to find out that some had used it for other purposes and that’s where the problem comes. Data collection is financially constrained because PDM money was sent to districts and used for other things.

“Up to now, some areas have not started data collection. In Kampala and Wakiso, they have collected only 1%. It is the same with many municipalities. They have no resources. We don’t want to leave anyone behind. We want to identify properly to see if you deserve to benefit.”

He noted that the local governments that don’t have money for the data collection exercise have since written to the Ministry of Finance to provide the finances for the exercise.

The UBOS boss however defended the delay that he said will be worth it since only those who deserve to access the cash to help them move out of subsistence production into commercial production will get it.

“The country should be patient a bit .I know it will be justice delayed but when it comes, it will benefit only those it is intended for. I know we shall be slaughtered for delaying but for us as the bureau we stick to the truth. You can hang us but we shall say no, this is what is supposed to be done. If you want us to be involved, wait for credible data but for now, we are not yet ready to advise government to roll out the Parish Development Model program. If resources are available, may be by the end of August we shall be ready.”

He said that whereas “politicians” want the program to start right away, there are dangers in it that he said can be avoided by waiting a little to ensure credible data is collected to inform decision makers.

President Museveni recently said the Parish Development Model is the magic bullet to the problem of unemployment in Uganda.

“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.”

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.

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.”