The national coordinator of the Parish Development Model (PDM), Dennis Galabuzi Ssozi has revealed that the government flagship program is meant for only the 39% of Ugandans who are living a subsistence life to enable them to get involved in the cash economy.
Galabuzi said this while at the NRM secretariat in a weekly ideological clinic where he was invited to enlighten Ugandans on the PDM modus operandi.
“We all have people in our communities who are working for only the stomach. These are the people we are targeting and they are 39% of Ugandans. The common person at the grass-root who has not been involved in the money economy,” he said.
According to Galabuzi, the government has tried several programmes to uplift the living standards of Ugandans but it has failed due to many factors like technocrats embezzling the money, politicking, refusing to pay back the revolving loans among others, saying that PDM has come with hindsight to tackle all the bottlenecks.
“There have been very many interventions to eradicate poverty, some have not performed to the expectations. But for PDM we have come with hindsight based on the challenges we faced before. The challenge is that people are centralising politics on the issue of PDM. I request everyone to appreciate the concept and we all move in one direction,” Galabuzi noted.
Galabuzi emphasized that this time, the government is going to release money directly from the top to parish-based SACCOs such that it can be well monitored by parish chiefs.
He said that this is done to remove bureaucracy where money can get lost as has been the case before.
Derived from one of NRM’s core ideological principles of socio-economic transformation, PDM, Galabuzi said, is a question every leader must be interested in.
“This programme deals with solving problems faced within our societies. As a leader, your legacy is built on changing the lives of your people,” he said.
PDM was launched on February 26 2022, in Kibuku district, Bukedi sub-region as a government flagship programme geared towards wealth creation and poverty eradication among Ugandans.