DP Headquarters, City House

Enact New Laws

Democratic Party, believes in a mixed economy where both the state and individuals can do business, therefore our view of a liberalized economy is that the government maintains a substantive stake in key sectors like Health, Transport, Banking, communication and utilities.

Contrary to the approach of the National Resistance Movement of absolutely surrendering all sectors including the key aforementioned into the hands of private entrepreneurs, Democratic Party believes and strongly so that enactment of enabling laws to check the cost of services in key sectors that provide basic services to Ugandans is paramount.

This would avoid circumstances that the country found itself in during the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic where private transport companies, hospitals and other service providers hyped the cost of their services.

Therefore, Democratic Party desires to put the government on task to enact laws that shall keep the costs of such services in abeyance during the anticipated third wave of the pandemic.

Emyooga

The government of Uganda earmarked Shs 200billion to be distributed to Saccos in 347 constituencies of the 146 districts in the Country and that the intention was to foster development and convert the 68% homesteads on subsistence into market-oriented production. This program was named “Emyooga”, inasmuch as we agree with the government on the objective of the program, we are dissidents on the approach.

Democratic Party gave her opinion on the program, we strongly stated that, if the government ignores empowering the beneficiaries with knowledge on how to apply their skills, then, the ” Emyooga” program just like the previous programs rolled out by the NRM government such as Poverty Action Plan, Poverty Alleviation Program, Entandikwa, NUSAF 1 and 2 etc, will not yield the desired results.

In not more than one year, we have started registering substantive inadequacies of this program, we have seen the formation of conglomerates around an occupation that group members have never practised simply to form Saccos through which the “Emyooga” money can be siphoned, and many have succeeded. This in essence imports that the government seems not to have the capacity to determine whether or not the individuals claiming the money under the occupation they claim to belong to have the skills to do the work involved.

Those that are without knowledge and skills to work won’t be able to utilize the money appropriately to their benefit, subsequently, they cannot be able to pay back the money with the 8% annual interest. We emphasize that it was very important for the government to first enrol the beneficiaries into short program courses to master the art of their works before giving out the money to them.

That said, Democratic Party holds the opinion that since 80% of our population are in agriculture, such programs must be channelled to agriculture, this is because, at the end of the day even the targeted beneficiaries primarily do subsistence farming, the government should aim at creating programs intended to equip subsistence farmers to do commercial or modern farming this substantially can cause economic development.

Parliament recess

Democratic Party notes concernedly that, Parliament is on recess and the members were given instructions to monitor the “Emyooga” program in their constituencies under the pretext of performing an oversight role. This is rather unfortunate, going by this style of conducting parliamentary business, the 11th Parliament seems to suggest that every program that the government will be rolling out shall be given two weeks or thereabouts of Parliament’s time and yet the Parliament has a lot of unfinished business accruing from the 10th Parliament.

We read no necessity as Democratic Party for the house to be driven into a recess under the guise of performing a duty that could be done concomitantly with legislation.

Thanks

Okoler Opio Lo Amanu
DP Spokesperson