Minister Amongi advises women to embrace PDM

The minister of Gender, Labour and social Development, Betty Amongi has called upon women to use the Parish Development Model to improve their economic status and get out of poverty.

Launching the Aga Khan Foundation Uganda Gender Equality and women's empowerment strategy at Sheraton Hotel in Kampala on 22rd November, he says the government has designed programs aimed at promoting women empowerment and women should take advantage to get out of poverty.

“Government of Uganda has designed programs aimed at promoting Women Economic Empowerment including the Parish Development Model (PDM) which will give women the opportunity to access 30% of the resources of the Parish SACCO revolving fund,” she says.

“This is to support women and girls to move out of subsistence farming and engage in production for markets and hence get involved in the money economy,” she added.

She says the Ministry is implementing the Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP) where a total of UGX 114.29 Billion has been invested over the last 6 years reaching 237,474 individual women beneficiaries.

Also, Amongi said, Government is implementing the World Bank supported 5year Project on Generating Growth Opportunities and Productivity for Women Enterprises (GROW), a project aims to increase access to entrepreneurial services that enable female entrepreneurs to grow their enterprises from micro to small and from small to medium enterprises through business development services, access to finance and other financial services, gender responsive infrastructure and services.

GROW is a US Dollar 217m (about sh800b) World Bank funded project.

She added the ministry is currently engaging with selected Women Organisations to support the implementation of GROW on strengthening Women Economic Platforms and Positive Social Norm Change.

She also noted that since the NRM Government came into power, remarkable progress has been achieved for women in leadership and decision making.

“This is attributed to the affirmative action provision in the Local Government Act, which stipulates that one third of all Local Governments shall be women e.g. the Vice President, the Rt. Hon. Speaker of parliament, the Prime Minister and some Permanent Secretaries to mention but a few are women and they effectively contribute to the development of the country,” she added.