OPM, UNHCR start verification of refugees who missed food, cash

Amuru. The Office of the Prime Minister [OPM] and humanitarian aid agency UNHCR, have started verifying South Sudanese Refugees who missed out on food and cash supplies in refugee settlements in Adjumani District.
Close to 2,000 refugees across the 18 refugee settlements in the district have been stranded for the past four months after their names disappeared from the food and cash distribution list managed by OPM.
Last week, officials from OPM revealed that the refugees missed out on the food and cash supplies due to errors created while adopting new tools for registering and managing refugee data.
The government recently shifted to proGres version four [proGres v4], a globally used technology to enable an improved data management capability as recommended by UNHCR after an audit found that refugees numbers in the country were inflated.
Initially, OPM had been using the refugee Information Management System (RIMS) which earlier captured inflated figures of South Sudanese Refugees in the country.
Mr Titus Jogo, the OPM Refugee Desk Officer in Adjumani District, told Daily Monitor in an interview on Monday that the team from OPM, World Food Programme and UNHCR started verification of the refugees on Monday.
“We have started verifying the refugees who missed out on food and cash supplies today [Monday December 31]. We began with Maaji Refugee settlements and currently we hope to cover seven other refugee settlements by close of business,” Mr Jogo said.
He noted that they opened a litigation desk where the refugees who missed out on food and cash supplies will lodge their concerns.
“What we are doing is trying to verify those who had photocopied food cards to find out whether the codes on their cards match with what is in our database.
“If they match, we give them their entitlements for 30 days without hesitating,” Mr Jogo said.
According to Mr Jogo, the team on the ground will do thorough verification that will include finger print checks of the refugees to ensure that there is no duplication.
He said all those who have been affected by the verification will be able to get their monthly supplies of food and cash.

Refugee numbers
Adjumani District hosts some 200,000 South Sudanese Refugees in 18 settlement centres across the district.
Uganda hosts about 1.15 million refugees: 785,000 from South Sudan, 284,000 from DR Congo, 33,000 from Burundi, 22,000 from Somalia, 14,000 from Rwanda and 14,000 from other countries, including Kenya, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Eritrea and Pakistan.

Background

In August 2017, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) established that more than one million South Sudanese had sought safety in Uganda since the fighting in July 2016.