LWENGO – Authorities in Lwengo district have halted the disbursement of the Parish Development Funds [PDM] funds after establishing that there were irregularities in the selection of the beneficiaries targeted by the programme meant to fight poverty in the country.
The Minister of State for Local Government, Victoria Rusoke launched the disbursement of PDM funds to the beneficiaries in the district two weeks ago.
However, the resident district commissioner, Hussein Hudu says they have decided to halt the disbursement of the PDM funds after establishing that rich individuals and families had been listed to benefit from the programme meant to move the poor households from the subsistence economy to the money.
According to Hudu, Lwengo district has 45 parishes and a total of 1,012 households had already been prepared to receive the PDM revolving funds. “We found rich people on the lists yet they possess big chunks of farmland with heads of cattle while others have big business enterprises.”
“In some of the parishes like Katovu and Malongo, we found out that LC1 chairmen and parish chiefs listed rich people as PDM beneficiaries while they did not consider poor households in the district,” he said.
Hudu warned that corrupt village leaders, parish chiefs, and the technical staff are frustrating the PDM implementation in the Lwengo district. “The culprits in this matter will be arrested for frustrating the government programme,” he said.
The Lwengo district chief administrative officer, George Ntulume said some of the rich people found on the PDM lists are those who also earlier benefited from the Emyooga Programme, Youth Livelihood Programme [ULP], and Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme [UWEP].
“We have started scrutinizing all the lists of PDM beneficiaries and update them with the targeted beneficiaries, after which the disbursement of the funds will resume,” he said.
Also, while speaking to this report, Patrick Mutoni the PDM senior policy analyst advised the district technical staff to identify the genuine PDM funds beneficiaries.
He said that under Parish Development Management Information System, the PDM secretariat will deploy ICT technical persons to help in the verification and certification of eligible PDM beneficiaries in the districts.
https://thecooperator.news/lwengo-farmers-benefit-from-multimillion-resource-centre/
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