Dokolo RDC halts registration of PDM beneficiaries over extortion

DOKOLO, November 30, 2023 – Due to the alleged extortion and fraud, the Dokolo Resident District Commissioner [RDC], Barbara Akech has halted the registration of people to benefit from the Parish Development Model [PDM].

While meeting village chairpersons in Adok Sub-county recently, Akech claimed PDM SACCO leaders were extorting money from the community members purportedly to register them as PDM beneficiaries yet the government has not released the money.

The RDC said vetting and profiling people for the second phase of disbursement of the PDM funds will only begin when government releases funds for the second quarter of the current financial year 2023/2024.

“The issue of registering new groups is ongoing in almost all the sub-counties in the district  and those doing it are soliciting money from the vulnerable members of the community,” she said.

Patience Bangazi, the Dokolo District Police Commander, cautioned PDM SACCO leaders against abusing the guideline of the programme, saying they have received a lot of corruption allegations and that they had launched investigations into the matter.

“You find that the chairperson of the SACCO has registered the wife and other family members as a beneficiaries of the PDM. This is very unfortunate, and yet the guidelines are very clear; one homestead gets 1 million,” she said.

“When it comes to vetting, you find that all the relatives, in-laws and girlfriends are the one on the list of beneficiaries,” she noted. “Those in offices, let us not use them for our own gains,” she said.

Rubby Ogwali, the Adok Sub-county LCIII chairperson, said a number of people missed the PDM money in the first quarter of the financial year, and the SACCO leaders are using this to solicit money from those who expect to benefit in the second quarter.

The PDM was launched in February 2022, to help move 3.5 million households still in the subsistence economy to the money economy through commercial production, especially in the agricultural value chain.

Government has earmarked Shs 100mln for each of the 10,594 parishes in Uganda every financial year for the programme’s beneficiaries to borrow fund enterprises such as coffee, dairy farming, fish farming, beans, maize, fruits, piggery, among others.

https://thecooperator.news/soroti-rdc-warns-pdm-sacco-leaders-over-corruption/

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