Auditor General Reports 500 Ghost PDM SACCOs

A report by the Auditor General has revealed questionable activities regarding the Parish Development Model (PDM) and suggested loss of government funds in its implementation.

The PDM is a strategy for service delivery by the Government of Uganda to improve the incomes and welfare of all Ugandans at the household level by transforming 39 percent of households from a subsistence economy to a money economy. 

By the end of the year 2024, just over 2 Trillion Shillings had been disbursed to 10,589 parishes across all districts of Uganda, and the PDM Secretariat reported that most districts had disbursed 80 to 100 percent of the funds to their respective Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies (SACCO).   

However, the programme has been characterised by inappropriate activities including district officials and parish chiefs diverting the funds, officials asking for kickbacks from the intended beneficiaries before releasing the money, and giving out less than 1 million shillings per person as procedures state. 

Each PDM SACCO is supposed to get 100 million shillings per year over the five years of the strategy, as a revolving fund amongst the beneficiaries. The Officer of the Auditor General (OAG), in its assessment of the programmes for the financial year 2023/2024, shows that Parliament appropriated 1.107 Trillion Shillings for the programme. 

About 1.06 Trillion was for the Parish Revolving Fund (PRF) to finance 10,594 PDM SACCOs in 176 Local Governments and Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), but the assessment reveals that hundreds of the purported SACCOS did not exist, yet records show that money was disbursed to them. 

In addition, thousands of others did not have offices, hence making it hard to physically trade them, in case of need. “I noted that 2,985 PDM Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies (SACCOs) in 127 LGs, did not have registered offices on their documents; 567 PDM SACCOs in 41 LGs’ registered offices did not exist, while 2,898 PDM SACCOs in 121 LGs did not have evidence of a signboard showing their names and address,” says Auditor General Edward Akol. 

This adds to the fears that accountability for the trillions of shillings spent will be has to do, and might affect the future disbursement of funds from the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development.  The AG is also concerned about the possibility that some recipients of the funds and the ministries, departments and agencies, did not use them for projects prescribed under the strategy pillars.   

“I was not provided with evidence for the identification of 5,099 PDM parish/ward priorities in 115 LGs, using the format prescribed in the guidelines. In addition, I did not obtain evidence that the 25 participating MDAs aligned their work plans to the pillar implementation action plans,” he says. 

The PDM is implemented under seven pillars and the primary pillar is the “Agriculture Value Chain Development (Production, Storage, Processing, and Marketing)”. 

The other pillars are Infrastructure and Economic Services; Financial Inclusion; Social Services; Community Mobilization and mindset change; Parish Development Management Information System; and Governance and Administration. According to data collected from the PDM Information System National Household Registration Reports as of April 2024, household-level data collection was at 79.93 percent progress level, while the population registered was only at 46.3 percent progress level. 

The AG is of the view that this data should have been the basis upon which the population would be profiled to identify qualifying beneficiaries, as well as facilitate periodic reviews and impact assessments. He calls on the Accounting Officers of local governments to ensure that PDM committees and the lower local governments are trained in the prioritization and incorporation of PDM activities in the budgets and work plans and ensure that all the committees are fully constituted and functional. 

The AG also recommends that the Uganda Bureau of Statistics liaise with the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance and the PDM Secretariat to integrate the results of the census into the PDMIS data collection and registration module, to facilitate profiling and identification of subsistence households.