MP urges Fort Portal parents to embrace PDM
FORT PORTAL – Fort Portal City Woman Member of Parliament, Irene Linda Mugisa has asked poor parents in the city to embrace the Parish Development Model [PDM] to improve household incomes.
She said some parents have become too lazy to the extent that even when government initiates programmes to help them get out of poverty, they don’t want to be part of them.
“I don’t know if it is laziness or you don’t want to get out of poverty. Most of you parents have not joined PDM and you are still blaming government that it is not helping you. How do you want to be helped?” she said recently during a parents’ meeting at Nyakasura Junior School in Fort Portal City.
Mugisa said PDM is meant to help the active poor get out of poverty but the rich are the ones showing interest in the programme and yet they are already well off.
She also said it is unfair for some parents to complain that government schools have become expensive when the same government has introduced free Universal Primary Education [UPE] and Universal Secondary School [USE] prorammes targeting learners from poor households.
“Government brought UPE and USE but you are claiming that it is still expensive to educate your children, now it has brought programmes like PDM and Emyooga which are meant to help you get out of poverty but you don’t want to embrace them, and still claim you are poor. Why don’t you appreciate government just for once?” Mugisa said.
The MP said Fort Portal City is yet to launch the disbursement of PDM funds to beneficiaries because those who had initially registered to benefit from the program were not the real targeted group.
“Other districts and cities have already launched the disbursement of PDM funds to beneficiaries and the money is already in circulation doing its work but here in Fort Portal City, money is still in the bank accounts of SACCOs because officials are still verifying the beneficiaries,” she said.
According to Dr. Stanley Businge, the Fort Portal City production officer who is also the PDM focal person, they are in the final stages of verifying PDM beneficiaries, and very soon, he said, they will launch the disbursement of funds to the beneficiaries.
“We have heard rumours that the PDM money is not there, that it was shared among the city officials which is not true. We encountered some challenges during verification of beneficiaries where we found out that most of those who were registered were not among the targeted group and this prompted us to repeat the whole process, hence the delay,” Businge said.
The PDM was launched in 2022 to benefit 39 percent of the active poor Ugandans and help them get out of poverty by improving their household income through commercial farming, targeting enterprises like coffee, bananas, dairy farming, piggery, and poultry keeping among others.
https://thecooperator.news/lango-cultural-leader-urges-women-to-embrace-pdm/
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