President Museveni has spent the past weeks campaigning in the western regions of Ankole and Rwenzori with emphasis on household wealth creation.
Like in other regions, the President has emphasised the seven pillars on which the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) derives its strength. These include unity, strength, peace and stability, development, wealth creation, employment and skill development.
He blends these pillars in such a way that one leads to the other. He says because of the unity in NRM, the party has emerged stronger than ever before and therefore no wrong elements have been able to distabilise Uganda, thus creating a conducive environment for the citizens to live in peace. This peace has in turn enabled growth of different types of income-generating activities.
As more people engage in agriculture, trade, service provision, industrialisation and many other activities, the government ensures these people are connected to their customers, clients and suppliers.
This is done through construction of a strong road network (actually many more roads are being worked on), extension of the power grid to hard-to-reach areas and provision of security – not to mention health and education among other developments.
However the NRM government has realised that Ugandans need to be helped to create wealth for their families. At one point President Museveni pointed out that those who plan to get government jobs and become rich are joking.
He said government employment is not a quick way of gaining wealth, unless you work for so long and save. Rather he advised that wealth is in the hands of the private sector and after government had realised this, it came up with plans of attracting more people into such ventures.
These ventures include operation wealth creation, which has been given a Shs1 trillion voucher, women fund – Shs234b, youth fund – Shs234, microfinance fund – Shs180b and innovation fund – Shs500b.
Accessing these funds will not be as difficult as it has been before. For instance, If Peter wants to get Shs5 million from the microfinance funds, he will not need to open up an account in the bank or stake his land title if he has any.
All Peter will need is to prove that he can be trusted with these funds and that he has a clear business into which he is going to sink the cash.
Previously it has been in such a way that one is required to deposit a certain amount of money into an account before being given the money. The same thing was happening for women and youth funds.
But the President has accompanied these funds with two pieces of advice; “Stop living reckless lives because you will contract Aids, die and leave behind orphans to suffer. Stop drinking so much alcohol because you will not have energy to work the next day.”
At one rally he said if you have millet in your granary and rats start eating it, you don’t burn the granary. You set traps to kill the rats as you continue planting more millet.
So, if the previous funds – such as Naads funds– were misused, government will continue hunting for those involved, but in the meantime, put more funds for the citizens to develop what Mr Museveni termed personal poverty eradication plans.
This eradication plan will go a long way to the village level where small groups like twezimbe, agali awamu, twekambe, etc will have the opportunity to access funds which they will be able to use on rotational basis so that group members can be able to get some income from lucrative small-scale businesses.
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