Minister of State for Labour,Employment & Industrial Relations, Col. (Rtd) Charles Okello Engola, was shot dead on Tuesday morning by his body guard in a Kampala suburb. The bodyguard identified as Private Wilson Sabiti, later turned the gun on himself

According to the Police Spokesperson, Fred Enaga, Engola was shot at close range at his residence in Kyanja on Tuesday while entering his vehicle to go to work.

Enaga also said that Ronald Otim, who was Engola’s ADC sustained severe injuries and is seeking treatment at Mulago Hospital.

Enaga says that Sabiti fired several shots at close range, killing Engola instantly. Enaga adds that after shooting the Minister, the bodyguard fled from the scene up to the trading center at Kyanja, Ring Road where he entered a salon and also shot himself dead.

Enaga says that they are yet to establish the motive of the shooting. He says that a team of detectives has been dispatched to the crime scene team for further investigations.

While in the military, Engola was the commander of the UPDF 501 Brigade, at Opit, in Gulu District.

He was then promoted to the rank of colonel and retired from the military in 2007.

During his political career, he served as Oyam District LCV Chairperson on the ruling NRM party ticket for two terms.

In 2016, he was elected Oyam North Member of Parliament and re-elected in 2021.

He also served as State Minister of Defence from 2016 until 2021.

Although it is not uncommon to support people facing calamities with relief items such as food, clothing and shelter, it shouldn’t be the modus operandi all the time. After the storm has calmed down, people affected by natural and even man-made disasters should instead be helped to rise again. If we continue feeding them, they will become comfortable to put in the hard work necessary for their development. It is not sustainable too.

Karamoja has been a story of relief for as long as Uganda has existed despite its massive potential in animal husbandry and of recent mineral exploration. With large swatches of land, and a culture around cattle keeping or pastoralism, how can people in the area be helped to move from holding cattle for bragging rights into a commercial activity? The world has never been short of demand for beef and other animal byproducts.

However, it seems we have always looked at Karamoja as a place that deserves pity hence the massive plan to donate cheap iron sheets that we hear didn’t even reach those who needed them. A 28-guage galvanized iron sheet on average costs Shs30,000 which is approximately US$8 and if a family was to get 10 sheets, that would still be less than a price of an emaciated calf.

But like the popular Chinese proverb urges, you need to teach people how to fish instead of giving them fish. If we are giving Karamoja people iron sheets, we are denying them an opportunity to shift into decent and meaningful work that is sustainable.

If anyone wants to build an iron sheet roofed house, how can they be enabled to afford it on their own? The idea is to empower them and introduce animal husbandry that is geared at turning a profit. That one can sell some of their cows and don’t necessarily have to raid a neighbor’s and with some profit made, they can be able to build these houses on their own.

Milk could be another area that can enable people in Karamoja get decent sustainable incomes. Cows in whatever form produce some bit of milk which the farmers or pastoralists can be able to sell and get sustainable income.

In the western Uganda milk shed, government and indeed some development partners have supported the installation of milk coolers in every single trading centre. What farmers now do is to deliver the milk every morning to a trading centre where a cooler has been installed. The farmers formed associations and SACCOs that own the coolers.

So once they got themselves into these associations, development partners such as Agricultural Business Initiative (aBi) offered farmers grants where they only paid back 50 percent and fully owned the cooler. A cooler came with a standby generator and a lab kit to test that the milk being delivered is of the required quality. Farmers also got aluminum cans to transport the milk. That has significantly changed the fortunes of farmers in the western Uganda milk shed.

People no longer move long distances to transport milk to major towns such as Mbarara where many times they would find coolers full to capacity hence pouring the milk. You heard that milk flows in Mbarara, it was because of lack of cooling capacity. Today, there is no milk being poured on the streets of Mbarara because of these coolers. Milk factories and indeed some traders simply pick from these cooling centres. Farmers are paid every month by their SACCOs.

But these SACCOs have gone ahead and expanded creating credit and even food facilities. A farmer who needs money simply gets a low interest loan from the SACCO where they supply milk and then the money is deducted at the end of the month. Also the SACCOs have established drug shops and food stores. A farmer who wants rice or salt simply gets it from the shop and money is deducted at the end of the month.

Some of these groups like Abesigika and the one in Ntungamo collect thousands of litres of milk per a day. To ensure they get more from every litre, many SACCOS have bought their own trucks so they transport the milk to the factories.

In areas like Rushere, SACCO managers told me that even banks like Uganda Development Bank enable them borrow billions of shillings collectively to improve their farms with water and pasture.

Women who were previously excluded from the milk industry are now involved with many forming additional groupings to make ghee, yoghurt, butter and such other things from their milk.

Nobody I believe in the western milk shed needs a few iron sheets to roof their houses. What is so difficult in replicating this model in Karamoja?

President Yoweri Museveni has criticized the complexity of the terms used in the Parish Development Model (PDM) pillars saying they are confusing and hard to understand by both local leaders and beneficiaries.

Museveni notes that he had personally in a past cabinet meeting stressed his concerns that the locals may not be able to understand clearly the seven pillars of PDM. Speaking at a rally at Kaunda Paly Grounds in Gulu City Friday in a mix of both English and Acholi dialects, the President said the seven pillars of PDM haven’t been clearly understood by the leaders in the region.

The seven pillars of PDM are Agriculture (Production, Storage, Processing, and Marketing), Infrastructure and Economic Services, Financial Inclusion, Social Services, Mindset change, Parish Based Management Information System, and Governance and Administration.

Museveni noted that PDM should only stand on two grounds of wealth creation and making wealth in a calculated manner.

The president was Friday concluding his two days’ tour of the Acholi Sub-region on a mission to preach wealth creation and prosperity message to people in the region.

During the rally, several people raised complaints of the gaps in the implementation of the programme which has left locals unable to benefit. This was after an official at the PDM secretariat made submissions on the implementation of PDM.

Different speakers told the President that whereas the PDM idea is good, its implementation was being affected by corrupt civil servants at the district, city and sub-county levels.

Alex Okoya, the Local Council 2 Chairperson of Labour Line Ward in Gulu City, alleged that the selection of Parish Development committees which should have happened at the parish levels was recently hijacked by a group of corrupt individuals and instead done at the city council. Okoya notes that the beneficiaries who should have been made aware of the process in time were only informed some hours before the exercise.

Doreen Adkorach, a resident of Unyama says the majority of the groups in Unyama and Awach Sub-counties, where she is one of the monitoring group members for the Inspectorate of Government, were made to pay money before joining a Sacco group.

She asked the president to reign in on the issues surrounding the disappearance of money meant for group members in the area.

In his response to the complaints of the locals, President Museveni revealed he will be returning in April to visit one of the Parishes in the region randomly to get first-hand information from the benefiting group members.

He promised to take action once he finds out that the problems of PDM are being created either by the Sub-county officials or banks.

Museveni says despite his visit to the region, he never got the chance to visit groups or farmers who are directly benefiting from PDM and promised to visit and reprimand those who will be found messing with the programme.

PDM is one of the latest strategies by the Government to deliver services to the people for improved livelihood.

In December last year, the government released over two Billion Shillings in parish revolving fund for beneficiaries in Acholi Sub-region in both Centenary and DFCU banks.

Through the programme, the government targets a total of 16.1 million Ugandans, or 3.5 million households, living under a subsistence economy to benefit from PDM.

The installation of electric fences around Murchison Falls National Game Park in Nwoya District has stalled due to the delayed release of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).

Last year, Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) received 5.7 billion Shillings in grants from the World Bank for the installation of electric fences stretching 101 km to mitigate human-wildlife conflict.

UWA later conducted an Environmental Impact Assessment on the mapped location in anticipation to install the electric fence around the national park in areas of Nwoya District.

Bashir Hangi, the UWA Communications Manager says the report hadn’t yet been released adding that it is still under review by the World Bank. He notes that the report will first have to meet the World Bank’s policies on the environment before being submitted to the National Environmental Management Authority for approval.

Hangi explains that besides the delayed release of the report, procurement of the necessary materials for the electric fence hasn’t yet been concluded.

He says without the EIA reports from the World Bank, they can’t carry on with the installation of the electric fence around the national park. He says work will only take off once all the process of approval has been met.

“We cannot now do construction before concluding the EIA, we will now be making a mistake, it’s wrong for us a government agency to start behaving in a way that is against the law, we are being law abiding to ensure we do the right thing,” says Hangi.

The Warden in charge of community conservation at Murchison Falls National Park Wilson Kagoro said that the delays have hindered the progress of the electric fence installation.

He says since UWA commenced installation of the electric fence in 2020, only 44 kilometers have since been covered. According to Kagoro, although they plan to fence a total of 436 kilometers around the national park with electric fences, the authority will use the Hippo Fence around areas of Pakwach district.

He however says funding shortages remain a huge setback to the planned installation of electric and Hippo fence to cover the entire national park bordering human settlement.

UWA says a kilometer of electric fence installation cost 50 million shillings.

The installation of an electric fence around the national park commenced in January 2020 following several complaints of wildlife invasion into community settlements in Nwoya and Oyam Districts that resulted in the destruction of crops, injuries, and the death of locals.

In July last year, hundreds of hectares of crops were destroyed by marauding elephants in Koch Goma and Koch Lii Sub-counties, one of the areas that have over the years seen a repeated influx of wild animals.