To avoid misuse of public funds, the Inspectorate of Government (IG) has been requested to conduct specific investigations into the Parish Development Model (PDM) program monies.

Every fiscal year, the government contributes about one trillion shillings to PDM. The monies, however, have not benefited the intended beneficiaries, according to Commissioner of Parliament Esther Afoyochan.

“A lot of money is going into PDM, but there is a lot of siphoning, and eventually, what is reaching the beneficiaries is a fraction of what it should have been,” Afoyochan added.

During a meeting with the government’s inspector general, Beti Kamya, Afoyochan stated that with the existing handling of the finances, the government may fail to fulfill its intended goal of bringing Ugandans out of the subsistence economy and into the money economy.

“I want you to be interested in PDM; you will be shocked at what is going on there, and yet you are aware that almost our entire budget is going towards PDM, so I would like our people’s lives to improve as PDM is there,” she stated.

She made the statements at Parliament on Tuesday while receiving the 47th, 48th, and 49th IG Bi-annual reports for the three periods January-June 2022, July-December 2022, and January-June 2023.

So far, the government has granted a total of 2.3 trillion shillings under the PDM as it transitions the initiative to rescue 3.5 million people imprisoned in subsistence agriculture to the money economy.

PDM was introduced in February 2022, and each of Uganda’s 10,594 parishes is expected to get sh100 million every fiscal year for the next five years.

According to Matia Kasaija, the minister of finance, planning, and economic development, the program is the mechanism for bringing the 39% of the population out of the subsistence economy and into the money economy via the seven pillars.

(Production, processing, and marketing), infrastructure and economic services development, financial inclusion, social services, mentality transformation, parish-based management information system, and governance and administration are among the pillars.