The Speaker of Parliament Anita Annet Among has written to the Finance ministry to ask for a detailed report on the use of the Parish Development Model (PMD) funds.
Anita Among addressed the letter to the Permanent Secretary at Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Ramathan Ggoobi.
In a letter dated February 1, 2023, Among said Parliament in exercise of its oversight mandate, seeks to establish the status of disbursement of funds under PDM.
“This is therefore to request you to avail my office with a detailed report on the disbursement of funds to beneficiary parishes under the Parish Development Model (PDM) and the respective beneficiary account details,” she wrote.
The letter which was copied to the deputy Speaker of Parliament, Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, the Government Chief Whip, Chief Opposition Whip and the Clerk to Parliament, seeks for this information to be clustered by districts.
The disbursement of the Parish Development Model (PDM) funds from parish Sacco accounts to beneficiaries kicked off nationwide in December last year.
Of the registered 10,594 parishes, only 8,600 parishes qualified for the final stage of accessing the PDM funds according to the Minister of Local Government, Raphael Magyezi.
The government cleared at least 8,600 parishes to disburse PDM money from the Sacco accounts to the individual beneficiaries for investment. The findings were contained in the PDM implementation status report adopted by Cabinet.
According to the government, efforts were underway to ensure that all Saccos start to disburse the funds to the final beneficiaries by February 2023.
For any Sacco to qualify for the final stage of investing the PDM fund, it must be approved by the Parish Development Committee (PDC) and the Parish Chiefs after assessing that the beneficiaries are ready to use the funds to maximise their household incomes.
Recently, the government released Shs264b for PDM and Ggoobi, requested that the Saccos that have not utilised the funds under the initial disbursements should not be given more money until they meet all the requirements.
The PDM implementation status report also indicated that the government has achieved almost all the requirements for the implementation such as; electing of all parish chiefs, establishing of the seven PDM pillars and developing of the working framework for the model.
The PDM is a government poverty alleviation programme that targets to uplift more than 16 million Ugandans into the money economy through offering a startup loan of Shs1m to each household to invest into agriculture activities such poultry, fish farming among others.
