By Alexander Kyokwijuka
Humble thoughts from Kigarama!
The Parish Development Model (PDM) is one of the programs that according to me is
going to serve the common Ugandan better. This is because of its uniqueness that it
targets the people at the grassroots and if well managed, it will serve the common
person better. The revolving fund, if well utilized, will help many people to get into
production and the results would spur more development in Uganda. I see the Middle-income status dream fast getting real.
For Uganda to realize her economic dreams and otherwise, there is an urgent need to
bring services closer to the people by strengthening the sub-county as the lowest
planning unit and the Parish as the administrative and operational hub for all
government services and I must commend the framers of the Parish Development
Model for premising its design and implementation strategy on this reality. The Third
National Development Plan (NDPIII) also emphasizes the Local Economic Development
which can easily catapult the economy to middle-income status, and I applaud the
national Planning experts for their wisdom.
However, I think that the development culture in Uganda has suffered so many setbacks
which in most cases have been due to human error and I can state without fear that we
need to keep vigilant concerning the remaining government programs especially the
Parish Development Model, which I have so much faith in.
The other day, I met and had a chat with Dr. Ezra Suruma, who is the current
Chancellor of Makerere University and former Minister for Finance and as we talked, the
Parish development Model came into the discussion. By the time we finished the
discussion, we had agreed that for a more sustainable development discourse in
Uganda, the Parish Development Model should be implemented with great commitment
and at some point, the program should evolve into a commercial National bank and it is
on this premise that I wish to propose that the Parish Development Model a should be
nurtured to evolve into a National Bank.
In my thinking, Uganda needs a national Bank, with a branch in every district in the
the whole country which can provide banking services and inexpensive loans to the
common people. My brothers in Kitambi, Kigarama with sizeable pineapple plantations
would then access cheat credit to venture into value addition and or improve their
agricultural practices and this would cushion them from the highly costly credit from our
current commercial banks.
Uganda currently has 146 Districts, and with an average staff of 20 per branch, this
would already create about 2920 direct jobs. Given the fact that each of these would
have a household depending on them, I see about the same number of households
being salvaged.
This is my humble opinion!
Alexander Kyokwijuka is, Humble Citizen from Kigarama, Ndorwa East
