President Museveni has said weighed in on the ongoing debate about the scrapping of the Uganda Coffee Development Authority.
In a missive on Saturday night, the president said there are sustained “lies” about the ongoing rationalization policy, noting that the role of some agencies is being overrated.
“Some of these agencies were started under the government of the NRM when the economy was down, and the Public Servants were all being paid low salaries. Since some people respond to only the mercenary logic of only working hard for personal remuneration such as pay, we tactically agreed that some government efforts could be executed outside the departmental structures of the government with the workers there paid higher salaries than those in the government departments,” Museveni said.
He noted that this is how UNRA, NAADS and UCDA among others came about.
Museveni said many of these agencies did not fulfil the targets of the NRM government , especially the third NRM principle of Social- economic transformation- involving all homesteads into the money economy.
He said by 2013, 68% of Ugandan homesteads were still in in subsistence production, noting that this way, he had to launch Operation Wealth Creation using the army to distribute coffee seedlings as well as the other planting and breeding materials to the farmers.
“If UCDA and NAADS were successful, why were 68% of the homesteads still outside the money economy by 2013? OWC did much more work than NAADS and UCDA and CDO combined.”
According to Museveni, in Masaka, Operation Wealth Creation has so far distributed over one million coffee seedlings and caused the planting of 38,666.6 acres of coffee.
He noted that OWC also gave out other planting and breeding materials: tea, fruits, pigs and cassava among others.
“That is how, for the first time in the history of Uganda, the number of the households in the money economy, is now 67% and those outside the money economy are 33%.”
“However, OWC also started having issues. Complaints started coming in of: begabira bbokka (they only give seedlings or materials to only themselves); bagaba bifu (they give poor quality materials); they are, moreover, overpriced; they also bring materials out of time; etc. These same accusations were, of course, more amplified during the time UCDA, NAADS, etc., were the sole actors in the field. That is how and why we came to PDM – let the People in the parish organize themselves, we give them government soft money and they buy for themselves the planting and the breeding materials and let the Emyooga, at the Constituency level, deal with the other skills and activities – some of which are not agricultural.”
“It is, therefore, fraudulent for NAADS, UCDA, etc., to claim that the big boost in agricultural production is because of their efforts and that if they are not there, production will suffer.”
1) The Govt Scientists and Research Centres that develop the
He said government scientists and research centres are responsible for improved seeds and breeding stock, citing the high yielding clonal coffee seeds were developed by Dr. Sebunya Kibirige, “not the irrelevant and opportunistic UCDA and NAADS.”
Museveni insisted it is foolhardy for “negative chauvinists” to deceive people about the role played by UCDA.
“People with the coffee, it is the NRM that revived and expanded its production as it did for all the other products enumerated above. If there are problems like the one with tea now, we shall sit with the stakeholders, discuss and get solutions, using rational solutions. Long live the rationalization.”
