By Aggrey Baba
Addressing the media on Monday, People’s Front for Freedom (PFF) proposed a major change to the Parish Development Model (PDM), asking government to stop putting UGX 100 million into each parish as revolving cash and instead use the money to buy tractors for communal farming.
The proposal, made by PFF acting chairman Dr Michael Lulume Bayiga at the party headquarters, comes as the country struggles with a prolonged dry spell that has left crops failing, livestock dying and farmers facing growing food insecurity.
Lulume’s argument is that at a time when rain-fed agriculture has been badly exposed by the drought, government should be putting resources into visible productive assets that can increase the amount of land farmers cultivate and reduce dependence on traditional methods of farming.
He said one tractor could cost about UGX50 million, meaning the annual UGX100 million parish allocation could theoretically buy two tractors.
“Something visible, something that can expand people’s production capacity,” Lulume said while explaining the proposal at PFF’s weekly press conference.
The party leaders said the tractors would not only help farmers increase production of food and cash crops but would also create employment for tractor drievers, while the remaining resources could be invested in food storage. His proposal effectively challenges the current design of PDM, which government says is intended to move poor Ugandans from subsistence production into the money economy through parish-level revolving funds. Government currently provides UGX100 million annually to each parish for the Parish Revolving Fund.
Lulume, however, questioned whether spreading the money among individual beneficiaries is producing the kind of agricultural transformation Uganda needs, particularly during a crisis such as the current drought.
He argued that community-owned tractors would leave behind a permanent productive asset which farmers could continue using long after individual PDM loans have been spent and repaid.
He also criticized the Ministry of Agriculture for directing farmers towards PDM money as a solution to the shortage of seeds, arguing that the people most affected by the drought are small-scale producers who have few alternative sources of income.
Lulume went further, saying PFF would propose two tractors per parish under its own federalized model of administration. His calculation was based on the number of parishes and the UGX100 million annual allocation, which he said could be pooled to buy agricultural machinery rather than distributed as individual financial support.
The proposal comes at a time when PDM itself is facing renewed questions over implementation. Parliament’s Finance Committee called in April for a review of the funding structure, arguing that the uniform UGX100 million allocation does not adequately take account of differences in population, land area and poverty levels between parishes.
Government, meanwhile, says PDM has reached millions of beneficiaries, with the Ministry of Finance reporting this month that 3.57 million people had benefited and UGX4.317 trillion had been invested through the programme. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
