Nabbanja sanctions audit into PDM funds

The Prime Minister, Ms Robinah Nabbanja, has sanctioned a forensic audit into the Parish Development Model (PDM) funds.

This follows reports about the sluggish release of the funds, banks withholding the funds, and the slow absorption rate in many districts.

“The PDM funds are not supposed to lie idle at the banks. We need to investigate if there is connivance leading to delayed release of the funds to the beneficiaries by some commercial banks,” Ms Nabbanja said during a meeting with the Luweero District leadership on Tuesday.

She added: “In some districts, only 50 percent of the funds have been released to the beneficiaries.”

The prime minister said the guidelines set by the government after the release of the PDM funds were clear and there were no strings attached.

 “The guidelines were that a single beneficiary gets at least Shs1m. We are now registering cases where the beneficiaries get Shs300,000. The PDM funds targeted the poor to boost their respective farm productivity. You should not create your own guidelines,” she said.

She tasked the government teams to deliver or tender in their resignations “if they feel public service is a burden”.

Luweero District received Shs10.8b for PDM, but only Shs5.3b has been disbursed to the beneficiaries. A total of 7,330 beneficiaries have received the funds, the district officials revealed.

The PDM programme is aimed at getting 39 percent of the country’s 43 million population that lives from hand-to-mouth.

  Each of Uganda’s 10,694 parishes will receive Shs100m which will be sent in installments.

Ms Nabbanja’s visit to Luweero is part of the mobilisation of the population to embrace PDM and other agricultural programmes.

Greater Luweero is set to host the second government-sponsored agriculture expo, which will run from September 1 to 3.

The Office of the Prime Minister is coordinating the different agriculture expos which are aimed at mobilising the farming population for production, productivity and profitability.

“We held the first expo for the greater Mubende District [last week] that was very successful. Greater Luweero will host the second expo scheduled between September 1 to 3,” Ms Rose Namayanja, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party deputy secretary general, said.

She added: “The farmers will have the opportunity to purchase subsidised planting material, among other farm inputs.”

Some of the PDM guidelines

• The guidelines limit civil servants, including parish chiefs from the direct operations of the PDM Savings and Credit Cooperatives Societies (Saccos). They are supposed to help in the sensitisation process.

• The loan is extended to a household. The guidelines limit the funds to a single household who can access a maximum of Shs1 million.

• The recipient household must be profiled on the PDM Information System.