President Museveni has told vulnerable people expecting to be served with food today that it’s just a relief and not a poverty alleviation program.
Museveni, while updating the country on COVID 19 on Friday said most people think that food and other items to be given out are for whoever think they are poor.
“Some people think it’s a poverty alleviation programme. Poverty is a long term problem. It has been there, but this food we are giving can’t remove away poverty,” he said.
Government’s move to supply people with food comes as a result of the presidential directive of a 14-day lockdown starting April 1 where all non-essential workers were ordered to stay home in a bid to contain the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
According to Museveni, not all people are getting this food but only the vulnerable. Such people include those whose survival was depending on their day-to-day earnings.
“We are looking at groups who were feeding themselves but living hand to mouth. Once you stop what they are doing because of health issues, where do they get food?
The majority of people in the country feed themselves like the farmers have their gardens and people in the towns have money and bank accounts with savings, so we can’t give them food but our focus is on the poor and vulnerable ones” he said.
According to the head of the Covid Task Team, who is also the Prime Minister Rwahakana Rugunda, for transparency and orderliness, items will be distributed at Local Council One level with close supervision of the police and army to ensure order and honesty.
The food items to be distributed are; six kilograms of maize flour and three kilograms of beans and salt per head. Lactating mothers and the sick will additionally receive two more kilograms of powdered milk and two kilograms of sugar. Groups of people to receive today’s food are the; widows, singles mothers, people with disabilities and orphanages.
The exercise will commence within the city in areas like Kireka, Nansana, Katanga, Namuwongo etc and Wakiso district since according to Uganda Bureau of Statistics (ubos) those are the areas where most of the urban poor people come from.
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