Hoima: Officials directed to reconsider lists of PDM beneficiaries

HOIMA – Officials implementing the Parish Development Model [PDM] in Hoima district have been directed to correct mistakes after the discovery of names of ineligible people on the lists of the beneficiaries.

According to the Hoima deputy district resident commissioner, Michael Muramira Kyakashari, several ineligible people have benefitted from the programme launched in early 2022, aimed at moving Uganda’s poor out of the subsistence economy to the money economy.

He said although government has set the criteria for selecting the beneficiaries of the PDM, ineligible people, for instance, in Kiganja and Kigorobya sub-counties, enrolled themselves to the five-year programme, costing government over Shs 1 trillion every financial year.

According to government, the programme targets 39 percent of Ugandans trapped in the subsistence economy.

Kyakashari noted that most of the PDM beneficiaries in Kiganja and Kigorobya have been found to be financially better off, creating suspicion that there could have been manipulation in the registration exercise.

He said they are working with the Gombolola Internal Security Officers [GISOs] alongside the PDM focal person to evaluate the lists of the beneficiaries and have names of those ineligible for the programme deleted.

However, he said they would petition Uganda Bureau of Statistics [UBOS] to provide the district with the data before the evaluation of the PDM beneficiaries kicks off.

Kyakashari said the parish chiefs will redo the exercise in consultation with the community members so that the right people benefit from the programme where each of the 10,594 parishes is supposed to receive Shs 100 million annually for income generating activities.

“We have agreed with PDM focal person that UBOS is going to give us the data they collected here so that we can allow the parish chiefs to go back in the community to collect right data. We have observed that some people gave wrong information. You find the rich people qualifying for the programme [PDM] yet the poor of the poorest not qualifying. This calls for the reevaluation the whole registration process,” he said.

However, speaking about the matter on Monday, John Tumusiime, the Hoima district commercial officer who is one of the implementers of the PDM in the district said all the beneficiaries were selected through a computerised system.

He said they used the UBOS data in the system to identify the beneficiaries, adding that nobody can access the money without passing through the system.

He noted that only those who failed to present some of the prerequisites such as the National ID were kicked out by the system.

Hoima district has 55 parishes and each parish received sh32 million and the entire district received sh1.76 billion.

On his part, Geofrey Komakechi, the Buseruka Sub-county district councilor and secretary for finance said challenge came about as the lists of the PDM beneficiaries generated by parish committees were rejected by UBOS.

“The parish committees are supposed to select beneficiaries after mapping the households of the vulnerable, so we are considering the list which UBOS submitted to us. The names of people we submitted to UBOS from the parish committees were rejected on grounds that they were not poor,” he said, adding that those who were confirmed by UBOS have already received their money.

https://thecooperator.news/namisindwa-pdm-officials-arrested-over-extortion/

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