The Secretary General of the National Resistance Movement (NRM), Rt. Hon. Richard Todwong has tasked the Assistant Resident District Commissioners (ARDCs) and Assistant Resident City Commissioners (ARCCs) to ensure effective service delivery to Ugandans through monitoring and mobilisation.
“How do you convince people to produce goods for the communities they live in? When you do this, the party will be popular and we shall have no problem in 2026,” he said.
Rt. Hon. Todwong made the appeal today while addressing the Assistant RDCs and RCCs who are undergoing a two-week induction training at the National Leadership Institute (NALI), Kyankwanzi.
The Secretary General advised the commissioners to focus on solving the challenges affecting the people they lead in their respective areas of jurisdiction in order to achieve the highly desired socio-economic transformation.
He also urged the Assistant RDCs to mobilise the masses to be job creators instead of seekers, to deal with the issue of unemployment.
“I’m happy NRM aims at creating job creators instead of job seekers. We used to under- look technical training but at the moment those who went to technical schools are the ones being employed,” he said.
“If we can produce food for consumption at home, why don’t you produce for the economy?” he added.
Rt. Hon. Todwong further encouraged the commissioners to ensure peace and security in their areas.
“You will never achieve anything if there’s no peace and security at the family, community and national level. If there’s poverty in a home, there will never be peace. But when there’s peace, people can produce and accumulate wealth.”
The Executive Director of Uganda Media Centre, Mr. Ofwono Opondo cautioned the Assistant RDCs/RCCs that they should work towards fulfilling their mandate because the government has put in place all the necessary requirements to enable them to do so.
“You are lucky to join service when the government has literally made a lot of progress and you will not lack anything. There should be no excuse for you to fail to do your work, whoever fails, should get out of our way,” he said.
“We don’t want you to go out of here and we start hearing that you are quarrelling with the Deputy RDC or the RDC. You are going out to mobilise, organise and offer leadership to Ugandans. And if you lose direction, admit your mistake. Admitting your mistake is a revolutionary spirit provided you do it on the right forum.”
Mr. Opondo also advised the trainees to be disciplined if they want to have a bright future in office.
“I appeal to you, you are the new seeds we are consciously planting, I hope you will not disappoint.
On the other hand, the Executive Director tipped the commissioners to always have factual content before engaging the masses via media.
“Each time you want to engage the media, first ask yourself what am I going to say? Where? Why? To whom? When? And how? Those five “Ws” and “H” are a must to you who is involved in mobilisation.”
Hon. Alhajji Kikulukunyu Faisal Ssali, Principal Development Officer, LED Department on Behalf of the Permanent Secretary of Local Government presented a paper on “Local Economic Development (LED), an approach to development of Uganda”.
Alhajji Ssali informed the Assistant RDCs that LED was very crucial in contributing to the necessary socio-economic transformation of the country.
“LED is a process through which local governments, the private sector and the communities form partnerships to mobilise, manage and invest resources effectively into economic ventures to stimulate development and growth of the locality,” he said.
The LED process entails stakeholder collaboration to assess the local economy, identify possible opportunities as well as challenges and obstacles, formulate and implement practical action plans to realise opportunities and resolve impediments.”
Furthermore, Alhajji Ssali noted that the government of Uganda and the Ministry of local government formulated and approved the National Local Economic Development policy 2014 to provide a framework for partnerships in LED and to serve as a vehicle for promoting and implementing LED initiatives by local governments.
“It aims at increasing business support by encouraging local investment centres, enhancing growth of the private sector investment in the local governments and increase in locality-generated revenue in form of direct taxes and Local government own revenue-generating ventures.”
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