WEST NILE STRUGGLES TO RECOVER OVER UGX 105 BILLION IN PDM FUNDS

Regional PDM focal Persons and officials from Ministry of Finance pose for Photo Moment after the first session.

By Dramadri Federick

Arua City

Lack of technical commitment to follow up beneficiaries of the Parish Development Model (PDM) in the West Nile region has left more than 105.6 billion shillings disbursed under the program uncollected across the 16 local governments in the region.

Figures from the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, shared during a regional engagement on the Financial Inclusion Pillar in Arua City, indicate that only 311.6 million shillings has so far been recovered out of the 105.9 billion shillings injected during the first phase of the program.

This places West Nile at the bottom among the 15 sub-regions in overall PDM recovery performance.

The report further reveals that Maracha District leads in recovery after collecting 170 million shillings, ranking tenth nationally and first in the West Nile region, followed by Madi-Okollo District.

The worst-performing districts include Nebbi, Obongi, Terego, and Moyo, which have recovered less than 0.009 percent of the funds disbursed during the first phase. This has raised concerns over monitoring, supervision, and direct engagement with beneficiaries.

Participant’s discussions modalities of collecting the funds.

Some PDM focal persons attribute the poor recovery to lack of motivation among extension workers tasked with implementing PDM activities, saying inadequate facilitation has made follow-up on fund utilization difficult. While others raised concerns about limited number of personnel.

Akenda Benson Olama, the Regional Enterprise Officer for West Nile, noted that due to high illiteracy levels, several intended beneficiaries were exploited by money lenders who acted as intermediaries between the Parish Development Model SACCOs and beneficiaries. He says the money lenders diverted farmers into their own financial products.

“Some farmers did not touch the one million shillings. Others got five hundred thousand shillings to some extend some people mainly money lenders in this country took advantage of the vulnerability of the farmers and went with their ATM cards, now they cannot access services,” Akenda noted.

Gore Goffin, the Arua Resident District Commissioner, has challenged the Ministry of Finance to allocate more resources for tracking investments under PDM enterprises in order to strengthen accountability.

“What is that thing you (Ministry of finance) is throwing back to the local government extension workers known as the focal PDM focal Persons to make sure they work and remain accountable for the funds disbursed?” he asked.

Daniel Muganda, the Financial Inclusion Lead, revealed that West Nile has a poor track record of accountability in government SACCO programs, as many beneficiaries fail to remit funds.

He added that government has committed 350 million shillings per district to facilitate technical officers and support tracking of the funds.

“The situation is bad and how do we solve this problem? If you can remember of all SACCO programs of government in west Nile the survival rate is minimal because people fail to pay back monies, their own money,” Muganda.

Muganda Daniel the Financial Inclusion Lead at Ministry of Finance PDM secretariat responding to questions raised.

Since the rollout of the Parish Development Model in the 2021/2022 financial year, aimed at improving livelihoods and household incomes, government has injected 3.261 trillion shillings into 10,589 PDM SACCOs across the country, benefiting more than 3.262 million people.