By Paul Zzimbe

As promised by President Museveni during his campaigns for the just concluded Presidential elections, the Government has rolled out the Parish Development Model-PDM, with effect from the financial year 2021/22.

The program is aimed at transforming 39% of households from subsistence economy to commercial production. The model is in line with the NDP III whose goal is to increase household incomes and improve the quality of life of Ugandans.

The model revolves around seven pillars; production and storage, processing and marketing, infrastructure and economic services, financial inclusion, social services, mindset change, parish-based management information system, and governance and administration.

In Kampala city, the model will be implemented in 99 wards that make up the five divisions of Kampala. The program will benefit approximately 4.5m people who live and work in Kampala city. Approximately 60% of all city residents live in the informal settlements of Namuwongo, Bwaise, Katanga, Katoogo, and others spread across the five divisions.

Slum upgrading has dodged city administrators and local leaders for a long time. This has been mainly because of challenges with the land tenure system, poverty, rapidly increasing populations, and limited finances.

Residents in informal settlements are grappling with several challenges that include; high levels of unemployment, poor infrastructure, flooding, poor drainage systems, high levels of poverty, among others. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns, the populations of the informal settlements have been hit hard and this can be explained by the concentration of social security interventions by the Government in the informal settlements.

In the past, the Government through KCCA and the Ministry of Gender has come up with several social empowerment interventions to improve the livelihoods of people in the informal settlements for instance; the Youth Livelihood fund, UWEP, Community Driven Development Funds, and NAADs/OWC. Whereas these have benefitted the communities a lot, the PDM seems to provide a better approach to sustainable community engineered development. Above all, PDM also gives a lot of prominence to special interest groups like women, PWDs, and youth.

The PDM will establish a development model system run and owned by the local residents. For a long time, residents in the informal settlements have complained of being left out of mainstream planning. Using Ward Development Committees, the local leaderships will be able to come up with tailor-made projects to address specific challenges faced by the people in the informal settlements.

Most of the dwellers in the informal settlements are engaged in small-scale economic activities. The establishment of the revolving fund for the ward/parish will help boost financial inclusion, innovation and strengthen the value chain of products. This in the end will lead to more revenue for Government.

The sound leadership in the city will also greatly aid the success of PDM. The KCCA-ED who is the accounting officer will be assisted by the Divisional Town Clerks. At the Ward level, Ward Administrators who are permanent staff with the technical ability to guide the Ward Development Committees will be in charge of overseeing the success of the programme.

Whereas there has been a lot of pessimism surrounding the feasibility of the PDM, there is no doubt that with PDM, the Government has come up with a robust development approach that is going to help in the transformation of informal settlements in the city in the post-Covid-19 era.

The writer is an Administrator in KCCA.

pzzimbe@kcca.go.ug