By Ahura Mujuni Mark
Sembabule district leaders have been accused of neglecting NAADS programs.This came after the Presidential monitoring team on the NAADS programme made a tour in the district and discovered the the NAADS projects introduced in the district have not given borne fruit according to the government’s expectations, specifically due to poor supervision by the district leaders.
The team led by Sister Grace Akiror the Special Presidential Advisor in Charge of NAADS Monitoring expressed dismay during a three day tour of the NAADS programme in Ssembabule and Bukomansimbi districts in which it was discovered that many farmers had failed to meet the set targets and over 40 million shillings was unaccounted for in the six sub counties visited.
Sister Akiror noted that there was inadequate supervision and monitoring of NAADS programmes in the district adding that even the distribution of agricultural technologies in many sub counties needed a lot to be desired. She also noted that there were many accountability problems as regards the NAADS funds and the sub county accountants were not doing their job. Akiror also expressed disappointment that the district leadership had particularly failed to help Grace Nakamanya a poultry farmer in Mabindo parish who received a heavy duty grain milling machine and a feed mixer from President Museveni in April 2011 and has since failed to install the machines due to lack of electricity and technical man power and yet the district officials are simply looking on as the machines waste away. “It is totally unfortunate that these machines are now wasting away at her home as the district officials look on,” she lamented.
The Special Presidential Advisor also expressed dismay that no action had been undertaken in Lwebitakule Sub County where several farmers received poor quality animals from NAADS service providers and others purportedly connived with NAADS officials who tagged the local cows in farmers’ homesteads to disguise that these where actually NAADS cows.
Other farmers had sold the technologies and instead claimed that they had died. Sister Akiror said there was need to show value for money and warned that culprits will be prosecuted and also forced to refund the money used in the purchase of the cows and other animals found to be of poor quality.
She singled out the family of Kyensi Jovani in Lwebitakule Sub County who has twice received goats and a heifer from the programmes and simply neglected them to die and the family of Jeremiah Madhvani who could have connived with the service providers to either tag his cow or get him a cheap one.
