Buvuma leaders said that they cannot sit back and wait for President Museveni himself to unearth the rot in the PDM in their jurisdiction.
A head of the anticipated visit of President Yoweri Museveni to Greater Mukono, which comprise districts like; Mukono, Buikwe, Kayunga and Buvuma as part of his ongoing countrywide monitoring and evaluation rounds of government poverty reduction projects including the Parish Development Model (PDM), a Buvuma town agent was on Wednesday sent to jail for meddling with PDM funds.
Erina Mukasa Naggita, a town agent for Buwangwe ward in Buvuma Town Council landed into trouble when different people publicly accused her of soliciting for money from the PDM beneficiaries before accessing the funds.
This was during a ‘baraza’ (public dialogue) held at Kitamiiro landing site, Buvuma Town Council, organized by Buvuma Deputy Resident District Commissioner (RDC) Patrick Mubiru and addressed by among others, Buvuma MP Robert Migadde Ndugwa, Ssezibwa Region Police Commander (RPC) Magezi Jaffer, the Regional Internal Security Officer (RISO) Alex Ssebunnya, district NRM officials and other area civic and political leaders.
Buvuma leaders said that they cannot sit back and wait for President Museveni himself to unearth the rot in the PDM in their jurisdiction.
In a most outrageous incident, Naggita is said to have withdrawn money from a PDM beneficiary family, only after two months of receiving it claiming that she had received information that they were planning to shift to another place of abode which the latter claims was not true.
In addition, the husband to the woman whom Nagitta had given the one million shillings PDM funds but withdrew it only after two months told the leaders that she went ahead to demand from them sh60,000 as interest even before they had started using the money.
A number of PDM beneficiaries with various complaints of extortion from Nagitta included Deogratius Wanzonere a.k.a Bush of Kitamiiro who said he paid sh10,000 to Naggita as a pre-requisite to benefit from the program but ended up not receiving the money.
For Tomaso Omona, he said Nagitta openly asks for sh10,000 from each PDM beneficiary, and those who never pay are denied a chance to receive the government funds intended to boost them from poverty.
Barbara Nakiranda reported that Nagitta went as far as attacking them at their homes and ignited bitter quarrels with them caliming they had reporter her to the authorities for being manipulative, even when they had paid her the sh10,000 required from every person.
“She claimed we had circulated rumours that we had given her sh10,000 before benefiting from the PDM program. This is illegal, no civil servant must abuse us even when we are local people. She goes around bragging that nowhere we can report her because she is well connected,” Nakiranda said.
Nunciata Nakidde said that though she asked for one million shillings, mandated for each PDM beneficiary, she was only allocated sh500,000 after payment of sh50,000 for allegedly processing her documents, in addition to another sh50,000 deducted by Finance Trust Bank Jinja claiming that it was meant for transport.
“I only received sh400,000, unfortunately I hear each beneficiary was designed to receive a million shillings, when will I receive my balance? And failure to get the balance, how much money will I pay back?” asked Nakidde.
These and many other allegations pinned Naggita and at the end, the deputy RDC, Mubiru gave her a chance to defend herself.
Naggita said that the residents had just teamed up against her and that they were making empty allegations which lacked any proof.
“I beg the leaders not to entertain empty allegations formed against me and boosted by some people, including one from the RDC’s office,” she said without mentioning any name behind the so called smear campaign.
On asking for sh10,000 per PDM beneficiary, Naggita said that she was advised by one of the officials from the Ministry handling Operation Wealth Creation, only identified as Brig. Muwanguzi who after landing into an audit query for manning the project in briefcase as she lacked an office.
The RPC Magezi however ordered for Naggita’s arrest and asked for anyone who is not satisfied by the way she handled them to go to the Police and record a statement.
“We cannot waste time here listening to explanations that are not adding up yet people have boldly come out and accused you, let police do the investigations,” he said.
A female police officer therefore escorted Naggita to Buvuma Police Station where she allegedly spent a night as people accusing her of manipulation kept on flocking the police for statements recording.
Matters of discussion which majorly attracted the islanders’ concern and centred around inaccessibility to GROW project funds despite fulfilment of the prerequisites and hurdle in the PDM especially slicing beneficiaries’ shs1m to as low as sh500,000 in some instances.
Speaker after speaker, the islanders told their leaders that because of these hardships, popularity of the NRM is steadily waning in the islands, and some openly declared their resolve to cross over to opposition parties if nothing is done to address the matter.
“We have suffered in abject poverty for years ever since fishing became inaccessible due to the deployment of UPDF soldiers on the lake who mistreated a big number of us leading to death of some of our colleagues. Unfortunately, even the PDM program which we had eagerly welcomed is also not helping us out due to the technicalities and extortion by the government employees,” said one of the speakers.
Buvuma MP Robert Migadde attributed NRM’s waning popularity to selfish leaders at the district whom he said, have neglected their responsibilities of explaining to the people the NRM’s achievements and programmes accomplished.
“At the end of the day, I have found myself shouldering responsibilities of doing this job and where I have been overwhelmed, the blame is turned to President Museveni and the entire NRM government,” he said.
He was sad that although remuneration for hard-to-reach staff is 30 percent higher than that of other government workers in the better local governments, many of the civil servants in Buvuma have not fulfilled their responsibilities, which he said has further dented the party’s support.
And the Deputy RDC Mubiru said he is going to name a 150-man youth team at every sub-county to regularly report to his office people’s complaints and problems in communities, and directed that all confiscated fishing gear confiscated from fishermen be restored to the owners.