Govt pushes for mindset change among PDM beneficiaries

Government has tasked Enterprise Uganda to drive mindset change among Parish Development Model (PDM) beneficiaries to maximise benefits in the programme that has been ongoing for about three years.
Speaking on the sidelines of a week-long training for PDM beneficiaries in the Teso sub-region at Soroti Youth Catholic Centre in Soroti District, Mr Charles Ocici, the Enterprise Uganda executive director, said for a long time they have been involved in changing the minds of Ugandans, which sits well with government’s agenda to change livelihoods and enable Ugandans to get into the money economy.
“For more than 20 years, we have been involved in skilling Ugandans and inculcating in entrepreneurs knowledge hinged on basic enterprise start-up tools. We have millions of success stories across the country. It is against this that government recently entrusted us with the responsibility of implementing pillar five of PDM. We are training beneficiaries to develop a business mindset to multiply the programme funds through entrepreneurship," he said.
Under pillar five, government is intensifying the push for a positive business mindset change to ensure that PDM beneficiaries are empowered with the necessary skills to run productive enterprises.
The push is expected to be carried out across the country, which Mr Ocici said, will focus on business development services to understand how to balance production and productivity, deliver customer needs and satisfaction, and navigate the terrain of competition in business.
“Most PDM beneficiaries are farmers. Their biggest challenge that we have to address is shifting their mindset into focusing on how to leverage the limited factors of production and increase productivity,” he said.
Government has been pushing PDM as one of the measures that will help to lift more than 30 percent of Ugandans into the money economy.
Recent data from Uganda Bureau of Statistics indicate that Teso is among the sub-regions with the highest poverty incidences, standing at 56 percent. However, poverty indecencies are worse in Acholi, standing at 64 percent, while in West Nile they are at 59 percent, and Lango at 57 percent.
The least poverty incidences were reported in Kampala at 0.4 percent, Buganda South at 18 percent and Buganda North at 30 percent.
World Bank data further shows that the share of Uganda’s population that earns less than $2.15 (Shs8,000) per day stands at 42.52 percent. 
Soroti City Resident City Commissioner Peter Pex Paak, said the value of mindset change pillar implementation will reinforce the current strategy that seeks to reduce the high levels of poverty in eastern Uganda, especially through PDM.
“We badly need to promote the mindset change agenda among our people who are predominantly farmers, we need to create awareness and tell our cattle keepers still locked in the past, that as they rear 10 animals that produce 20 litres of milk altogether per day, there are farmers in other regions that get the same amount of milk from one cow per day. We must wake up,” he said.
PDM beneficiaries are drawn from 10,585 parishes across the country. By June, 1.165 million households had received and invested PDM cash in poultry, dairy farming, piggery, horticulture and numerous cash and food crops.