Minister Omona Tips Lango MPs on Transformations

By OPM

Lango, Uganda: The Minister of State for Northern Uganda Dr. Kenneth Omona Olusegun has tipped the top leadership of the Lango Parliamentary Group (LPG) to embrace community mobilization and mindset change as pillars for socio-economic development in the northern region.

This was during a consultation meeting held at the Office of the Prime Minister between the minister and Members of Parliament from Lango sub-region on how different stakeholders could come together to improve livelihoods of people in the north stemming from household income. 

“Despite the numerous government interventions, unless efforts are made to sensitize the public about how to utilize such programmes, transformation might never happen,” the minister warned. 

“What I want us to fight is poverty and low income and I want leaders to work with to change our people. If you look at the latest recorded household survey, it still puts northern Uganda among the poorest regions. Acholi is the poorest region with 67% of the people poor, followed by Karamoja at 65% and others.”

Saying that concepts like wealth or poverty begin with the mind, the minister said he will soon task elected leaders to hold local baraza’s at parish level so that they can act as avenues to promote wealth creation. 

Hon. Awor Betty Engola, the Apac district Woman Member of Parliament called for agricultural mechanization as a tool that will eventually lead to value addition of products. She said that the households needed skilling, mechanization and finance. 

The Woman MP Amolatar Hon Dr. Agnes Atim Apea told the engagement that while working as a technical advisor in the 10th parliament to Operation Wealth Creation (OWC) they came up with the Lango Development Framework where key value chains that could develop the region were identified which could now be benchmarked on for implementation. 

Hon. Judith Alyek, the Chairperson of the parliamentary caucus thanked the minister for organizing the gathering saying they are ready to implement government programs.

The ministry is comprised of Lango, Acholi, West Nile, Bukedi and Bugisu with other programmes such as Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF) extending to Karamoja, Bunyoro and Teso.  

 Dr. Omona revealed that this was the first parliamentary group he was meeting and promised to meet other stakeholders before calling for a joint engagement on northern Uganda.