Pallisa leaders told to reject poor service providers

The minister of state for local government Jennifer Namuyangu Kacha has directed local leaders and the community to reject any fake inputs supplied to them or shoddy structures built for them.

Namuyangu who kick started her monitoring of local government programs in Apopong Sub County in Pallisa district gave this instruction at Apopong health centre III where the floor of the new general ward constructed with for sh149m is peeling off.

"You should not accept untested seeds because the district agricultural officers and the Operation Wealth Creation officers should first plant these seeds on demonstration farms before giving you the seedlings and with thorough observation you can tell that budding or grafting was done yesterday before supplies" she said.

Namuyangu who was in the company of Simon Kizito the senior inspector of the ministry of local government, blamed the local leaders community and even the district engineers for accepting such a building which has been eroded before it even serves the community for five years. It was constructed in 2014.

She said government is going to direct its forces to corrupt service providers as they keep on making government repeat the same activities every year and people always blame President Yoweri Museveni and the NRM government for nothing.

"The government under President Museveni is committed to ensure that by 2020 all Ugandans should be in middle class status.  Government is focusing on good service delivery so everybody should be vigilant on whatever program comes their way" she said.

Namuyangu said beneficiaries of Operation Wealth Creation who are given the same enterprises should be clustered and from one locality so that costs of monitoring, purchase of feeds and marketing is collective.

"I'm not impressed to have Akasairi Ochwa from Adal village in Apopong sub county to be given only 40 seedlings of oranges yet he wanted to plant oranges into two of his fourteen gardens yet everybody in this region is supposed to have fruit trees which are perennial so as to serve the constructed juice factory in Soroti" she said.

When Kenneth Kintu the chairperson of Petete Sub County asked the ministry of local government to increase funding to lower local governments and provision of motorcycles for effective service delivery and monitoring, Namuyangu answered that before more is asked, let the people feel the positive impact of what is sent first.

"You cannot ask for more yet there is nothing realistic to be seen from what you call little. First make the best use of what is available to impress government to give you more" she said.

Kintu said since the initiation of Operation Wealth Creation, his sub county got only 600kgs of beans, three cows and 300 seedlings of oranges were procured for his sub county at the cost he doesn't know.