By ALEX PITHUA

President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has explained that the Parish Development Model (PDM) program is one of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government’s deliberate interventions to get people out of poverty.

“The program of PDM is part of our philosophy from the 1960s.We didn’t believe that we should have poor people in our country. Before Amin came, we were mobilizing people to get out of poverty through education and sensitization.

We would walk through the Kraals in Ankole and talk to the people. We didn’t have any money or anything but just educating and it helped. It was our ideological position that we should not have poor people,” the President explained.

President Museveni made the remarks yesterday at State Lodge-Fort-Portal during an interaction with Journalists from the Rwenzori sub-region where he is currently on an assessment tour of the PDM program.

He revealed that the amount of Shs1 million per eligible household at the Parish level was arrived at using the enterprise of coffee as the reference point.

The President was reacting to some of the concerns raised by journalists that Shs 1 million given out under the PDM program is not enough to help the wananchi get out of poverty.

“At that time, to plant an acre of coffee you needed 450 Robusta seedlings. You needed Shs180,000 which would leave the borrower with Shs 820,000 for other things like digging holes etc. So that was our reference point at that time. But we can add on. What we want is people to get out of money-less-ness and get money,” the President asserted.

President Museveni explained that this was just the beginning, and plans are underway to increase PDM funding, but the government wants to first start with people who don’t have any means of creating wealth at all and later progress to those who at least have some basis.

“Nobody will be allowed to deduct PDM money, anybody who deducts will go to jail,” the President warned.

President Museveni further emphasized the need to prioritize environmental protection to mitigate climate change effects and for people to desist from settling at the steep slopes of the mountains.

He concluded by pledging to support the SACCO of the journalists from the Rwenzori sub-region with Shs100 million and to buy for them a mini bus.