Where is the money for PWDs?

The Promise
On Wednesday December 9, 2015, the Minister of Labour Gender and Social Development, Mr Wilson Muruli Mukasa, announced that government was set to increase budgetary allocation for special grants for persons living with disabilities (PWDs).
“With effect from next financial year (2016/2017), government will be considerably increasing funding to Persons Living with Disabilities (PWDs),” Mr Muruli Mukasa announced during celebrations to mark the International Day of People with Disability at the King George Memorial Stadium in Tororo Town. He was representing Prime minister Dr Ruhakana Rugunda at the function.
The Minister made the promise in response to a demand tabled by Mr Gofin Chandrya, the then chairperson of the National Council for Disability.
Mr Chandrya had complained that the money being given out to PWDs through the Special Grant for Persons with Disabilities, which became operational in 2011 and was designed to reduce inequality and unemployment by providing PWDs across the country with working capital to enable them engage in income generating activities, was too small to support both their huge numbers and enable them engage in business undertakings that can transform their lives.

How it works
Once PWDs organize themselves into formal groups, they can apply for funds from the Ministry of Gender and Social Development through the District Special Grant Committees, which are usually supervised by Community Development Officers (CDOs) at both the District, Sub-county, and Division levels and by extension the Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs).
Also eligible for funding are groups or associations of persons or parents of persons living with albinism and groups of parents of children living with disabilities.
However, a group has to have been in existence for more than a year before it can be eligible for funding.
Such groups also have to provide evidence of ability to absorb funding and proof that the undertaking will help reduce vulnerability and promote gender equity and disability balance.
The grants support income generating activities in the areas of agricultural production, tourism, trade, cultural heritage, micro and small scale businesses, metal and woodwork and apiary, among other undertakings.
Once the District Grants Committee has approved the beneficiaries, it submits the requisition for the required amounts to the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, which disburses the funds where it deems the beneficiaries and the process of selection have met all the set guidelines.
According to the 2014 National Housing and Population Census, PWDs comprise 5.6 million people (14.82 per cent) of Uganda’s total population of 37.78 million people, but their budgetary allocation stood at less than Shs1 billion, which did not compare favourably with allocations to the Youth and Women.
The budgetary allocation to the Uganda Women’s Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP) has been standing at Shs3 billion per year, while the funding to the Youth Livelihood Programme (YLP) has since its inception on January 24, 2014, received a total of Shs265 billion from government, averaging Shs53 billion per year.
But the funding to PWDs has stagnated at the Shs3 billion ever since the programme started, which explains why there have been calls for it to be adjusted comparably.
According to the PWDs Member of Parliament for Central Region, Ms Safia Nalule Juuko, government has never increased the amounts despite the increase in the number of districts from around 50 when the project first began to more than 110 now.
“We hear the government formula is that money is allocated to the districts according to sub-counties therein. For example, if Mukono, which was split to create another district of Buikwe, and used to get Shs100 million; they do not make more money available. They only split the sum into two so that Buikwe also gets something, yet there are all other factors like inflation which comes into play,” she explains.

Official Position
Two national budget later and close to two years since Mr Muruli Mukasa made the announcement, the increment has never been realised, but Mr Pius Bigirimana, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Gender and Community Development, remains optimistic.
“No (the money has never been increased). We have budgetary constraints, but we have hope that it will be increased. That is, however, dependent on revenue collection,” Mr Bigirimana says.

Impact
The impact of government’s failure to come good on the promise to increase the budgetary allocation to the PWDs means the programme continues to be dogged by seemingly insurmountable challenges.
Even the delivery and distribution of application forms from the CDOs to the beneficiaries is a problem that has persisted since the programme began. Despite the fact that movement is tedious for most of the beneficiaries, they often have to make several journeys to the sub-county headquarters before they can access the forms.
Besides, the beneficiaries are also required to present a viable proposal, yet most of the PWDs in the villages are either illiterate or poorly educated.
“Some of them are forced to give the CDOs money to write the proposals for them, by the time the money comes out it isn’t enough to fund the projects,” Ms Nalule Juuko says.
Moreover, there are hardly any operational funds remitted by the Ministry to the district and sub-county headquarters to run the PWD fund. This means areas such as communication, which should be vital components of the programme, are bereft of a budget to fund broadcasting of information about developments regarding the programme.
The result is that the flow of information, especially about when funds can be applied for or when forms have been delivered, is never relayed to PWDs.
The CDOs also don’t have budgets to organize meetings for the PWD Councils to make an input in the implementation of the programme, yet it is a normal practice for Council to refund transport and provide refreshments during such meetings, both of which the districts cannot afford.
Even worse, while the national guidelines which were rolled out in 2011 indicate that the local governments have to award funds ranging from Shs2 million to Shs5 million, the funding never goes beyond the Shs2 million mark. It is not possible for a group of 30 people to come up with a major project like dairy and poultry farming with a capital of only Shs2 million.
“It would improve our people’s lives if it could be increased a little. You cannot believe the amount of work and volumes of trade that some of our people have been involved in with the little that they have so far been allocated,” says Mr Hood Katuramu, the MP representing PWDs from Western Uganda.
This compels successful applicants to share out the money and start up petty trade by setting up mostly kiosks dealing in household items like salt, sugar and tea leaves. Chances that the beneficiaries of such a share out can wriggle their way out of poverty are only minimal.
In other cases, conflicts arise over expenditure of the little money that finally gets approved. This often leads to collapse of the projects at their inception stage.
Besides being too small an amount of money, it never gets to the beneficiaries in time.
Even where the funding has been approved and given, most of the PWDs lack the managerial skills or competence required to manage the projects. There is therefore need for the grant policy to be reviewed to provide for training in financial and project management skills.
While local government officials in the districts have been trying to mitigate this, the one-day training offered to those whose proposals are deemed successful is never adequate to help them hone their financial and business management skills.

Daily Monitor position

The biggest challenge here is no doubt the low levels of funding. It is therefore important that government increases the amounts available to PWDs to start up bigger projects that will help them free themselves from the shackles of poverty. Funding should also factor in facilitation of other activities that might be incidental to the success of the programme.
Those areas include training of the PWDs in y project and financial management and facilitating the district officials to hold regular meetings with PWD councillors for purposes of involving them in deciding which projects benefit from the funding.
It is also important that the funding provides for stationery and airtime on local FM radio stations to enable the CDOs disseminate vital information about the project in a timely manner.
Above all, there is need to revisit the administration of the programme with a view to removing it from the direct control of the Ministry of Gender and Community Development and placing it and the attendant funding in the Districts just like it is with the YLP and UWE Programmes.
Changes to the programme should borrow a model from YLD and UWE, where the Ministry only comes in when projects for which funding is being sought exceed Shs5 million.