President Yoweri Museveni will embark on wealth creation mobilisation drive in Acholi sub region from 23rd & 24th of February 2023 as he kick starts his socio-economic transformation of the country.
Top on the agenda will be exhibition and showcasing of different production & productivity sectors of the economy per district.
Mr President this is a well come move to awake the daunting Thomas’s from sleep to embrace social economic transformation journey.
Mr President you have laboured alot and launched impressive Poverty alleviation programmes to uplift vast majority of the public out of vicious circle of poverty however implementation of, monitoring and little sensitisation drives have been inadequate.
As you tour the country this time round I suggest you engage the forth estate on mass sensitisation partnership drives to not only publicise your tour as news but create massive awareness of already established government programmes to gain credibility.
The public needs to know about the impacts of these programmes, listen to the testimonies of the beneficiaries hence proper accountability and monitoring mechanisms for future programmes to bench mark on.
Critically there are visible poverty alleviation programmes that citizenry should have embraced and appreciated the ruling regime for spearheading social economic development of this country besides government role in ushering peace, security and economic stability of the country.
Am well convinced if these programmes are promoted, popularized opposition will not Incite violence and blame government for unfortunate failures but walk the talk of social economic transformation agenda other than waiting for government to chase after the public.
Mr President Under your leadership various programmes were launched to empower the youth, women and other disadvantaged group as a medium to fight poverty that needs to be popularised to gain credibility.
We have Presidential Initiative on Skilling the Girl/Boy Child [PISGBC] to fight poverty. Here various youth groups were equipped with skills tailoring, weaving, shoemaking, knitting, hairdressing making them self sufficient to create jobs
In the same scheme, boys have benefitted from free skills training in plumbing, carpentry, construction, mechanics, electronic and electrical installation, shoe-making and welding to create jobs and fend for their families.
Mr President PISGBC beneficiaries at Wabigalo Skilling Centre in Makindye Division who learnt different hands-on skills they acquired six months ago sufficiently contributing in different areas either individually running their small businesses they started or fully employed in different companies on full time basis.
Infact Mr President you deserve appreciation for being a visionary leader who took it upon your self to empower the vulnerable youth in Kampala through skilling irrespective of political background.
Before the skilling programme in Wabigalo Makindye most youths in the ghettos of Makindye used to take part in criminal acts such as theft and drug abuse but after the six months into the skilling training; they have been transformed for the better.
I thank the President for this initiative. Many of these people were idle on the streets of Kampala but they were given a chance and their lives have been transformed.
The PISGBC project was initiated by President Museveni in 2017 with a goal of empowering the underprivileged youth between the age of 17-35 years in Kampala ghettos through skilling. After the six months free training, beneficiaries are examined and awarded with certificates from the Directorate of Industrial Training (DIT).
The program was started by President Yoweri Museveni in 2017 to help youths especially the school drops to attain income generating skills.
So far over 20, 000 youths from within and around Kampala capital city have benefited and the President has since ordered that the program be extended to other districts across the country.
These vocational skills training is the major solution to deal with unemployment and underemployment especially among the youths in the country.
I appreciate President Museveni for his wise decision to invest in skills development among the youth in the country; this is the trend world-over and a sure way to fight unemployment.
I urge politicians to support the Presidential Initiative on Skilling Youth so as to reduce youth unemployment crisis.
The government initiatives are here to support all Ugandans in the country despite of the different political affiliations; let’s all embrace them and encourage the people we lead to take part so that we all overcome the fight against poverty.
The Presidential Initiative on Skilling the girl child, is set to reduce on the unemployment rates of youthful girls. The skills of baking, tailoring, weaving, shoe-making and hair-dressing has helped them to either start up small businesses which can later grow to employ others.
This initiative has been hailed as one that has the potential of eliminating the importation of second hand clothes since the trained girls will be able to make clothes in the long run. This will also provide market for raw materials like cotton from Kasese.
Mr President the initiative has helped the girl child create wealth and also help uplift others by creating jobs when their businesses expand. I therefore urge you train and equip more girls and boys in Kampala because they badly require these skills to fit in the dynamic job market and social economic transformation space.
We also have the Presidential Initiative on Wealth and Job creation (Emyooga) launched in August 2019 as part of the broad government strategy targeting to transform 68% of homesteads from subsistence to market-oriented production with the overall objective of promoting job creation and improving household incomes is another programme geared at poverty alleviation. The initiative is centered on various 18 categories/enterprises/Emyooga covering majority of the hitherto, financially excluded Ugandans engaged in similar specialized enterprise categories.
These are facilitated with both technical and financial support to enhance the performance of their projects, and ultimately their incomes.
Operation Wealth Creation that Coordinates government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies for improved service delivery and partly at transformed the 68% Ugandans outside into the money economy.
Operation Wealth Creation was launched by H.E the President of the Republic of Uganda in July 2013 as an intervention to efficiently facilitate national socio-economic transformation, with a focus on raising household incomes and wealth creation by transforming subsistence farmers into commercial farmers.
Mr President you also introduced Parish Development Model [PDM] to uplift Ugandans from poverty. Here one trillion was allocated this financial year 2022/2023 hence Divisions now getting 100 million to speed up the production sector.
The parish Development Model currently being monitored by Parliament on implementation progress is another avenue for socio economic transformation of he country which deserves contact monitoring and accountancy to deliver results.
Mr President PDM is pretty good programme however it requires a lot of monitoring by the various committees from politics.
With these nice programmes highly Uganda will be able to join the middle class economy.
Politicians should to see these programmes as money donation package from the president part as jump starter for economic transformation going forward. Uganda’s economy still weak footing with the country’s public debt stock rising beyond Shs86trillion amid hardships but we can cause change to push our out GDP per capita to $1, 067 by FY2023/24.
We have already entered the middle-income category which they have been talking about but we need three consecutive years with a GDP per capita above $1,030 targets which Uganda should surpass
From available statistics Uganda’s economy is projected to soar to $48billion by the end of June 2023, up from $1.5billion in 1986.
Interventions
We need to add value to export products to earn more from our export products in the marketplace like coffee, cotton, minerals and others. This will jump start our economy to $500b in a fairly short time.
Mr President our biggest problem has been exporting raw materials. Our neighbours Europeans, Americans benefit more from us because they do value addition.
Now that our economy is recovering from post covid 19 pandemic challenges, every adult must engage in the four sectors of wealth creation that include commercial agriculture, industrialization, service provision and ICT so that we can confidently take of social economic transformation of the country.
Government has put up all enabling environment for investment, infrastructure developments such as hospitals, security and education which are a foundation for domestic wealth creation that can end poverty.
What’s is now missing is monetising fully monetizing the economy by involving all families into commercial activities (agriculture, industry, services and ICT) with total change from hand to mouth strategy.
Secondly value addition to all our agricultural products that are not consumed fresh, as well as to the mineral raw-materials; this broad-based value addition to all our raw-materials, will catapult our economy from the size of US$50billion to an economy of may be US$500billion, half a trillion;
Thirdly with climate change effects with us we need to embrace irrigation for our agriculture to stabilize the food supply and production from subsistence to commercial farming.
Government must also continue to modernize and expand the economic infrastructures (roads, the railway, electricity, piped water, etc.) and modernize the social infrastructure (schools, health centres, stadiums, etc.)
Lastly government and the public should continuous work together to fight corruption so that the parasites are weeded out of the Public Service of Uganda and so that resources meant for various programmes are fully accounted for and put into good use.
Am confident that If these measures are fully implemented this will bring about our transformation to an independent, integrated and modern self-sustaining economy, deepen the regional integration of East Africa and the African continent.
The Writer is Chief Executive Officer of Elix Promotions Ltd
foketcho@gmail.com
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