James Muwonge, the Director of Methodology and Statistical Coordination Services at UBOS says the exercise will focus on collecting data on available services in all the Parishes across the subregion.
Some of the district planners and District Information and Technology Officers undergo a training on using community profiling tools in Gulu City on July 26 2023. Photo By Julius Ocungi
The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) is set
to start collecting data for the community profiling module under the Parish
Development Model (PDM) program in the Acholi subregion.
The exercise according to UBOS officials will
kick off on Monday at all parishes in the subregion and will take at
least two weeks.
James Muwonge, the Director of Methodology and Statistical
Coordination Services at UBOS says the exercise will focus on collecting data
on available services in all the Parishes across the subregion.
According to Muwonge, common services such as health
facilities, infrastructures, schools, and water sources among others will be
profiled to help in providing updated data to support the implementation of PDM.
He says the same data will also support the
local government in making decisive resource allocation based on a proper
understanding of the availability or shortage of services in the respective parishes.
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Muwonge says the Acholi sub-region was chosen second
after Karamoja based on the past 2021 survey report on the Poverty index which
portrayed the two regions as being the poorest in the country. He notes that
the data collection will support the government in understanding why the
regions have remained poor among others in the country.
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At least two officials each comprising Information
Technology (IT) and district Planners from the nine districts and Gulu City in
the region have been undergoing training on using community profiling tools in
Gulu City for the last two days.
Muwonge says those trained are expected to
impart their skills to the Parish chiefs in their respective districts on
Friday before the data collection exercise is rolled out on Monday next week.
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Gulu
District Chief Administrative Officer Ismail Ochengel however said they faced a
serious challenge in conducting data profiling exercises in the past UBOS activity
due to a lack of financial support from the parish chiefs.
UBOS launched a country-wide data profiling exercise
in June last year but the activity failed to deliver due to complaints from
parish chiefs over facilitation.
He said some of the parishes lagged behind in
the activity and called on the government to prioritize facilitating the parish
chiefs to ease their work.
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But Lydia Tuhaise, the Principal Statistician
clarified that the government has this time allocated resources that will
carter for airtime and data bundle, transport, and data collection allowances for
the parish chiefs. She acknowledged that lack of facilitation greatly affected
the data profiling exercise since the majority of the parish chiefs abandoned
the work.
“Last year, no facilitation was given to the
Parish chiefs and most of them paid less attention to the activity. They complained
that the exercise needed them to transport themselves and data for uploading
information which they never had the resources for,” she told URN in an
interview.
Gulu District, in particular, the community profiling
exercise is expected to be conducted in 47 parishes.
The government rolled out PDM, a program meant
to eradicate poverty through the execution of development activities at the
parishes in February last year. The initiative targets to lift 17.5 million
Ugandans in 3.5 million households out of poverty into the money economy.
