Reaching the poor: Poverty funds disappear

Many of the national funds for eradicating poverty never reach the poor. Instead they are eaten up by corruption and inefficiency

By Henry Muguzi, ACCU

The Ugandan government has for the past five years been consistently committing huge sums of money to developing and implementing policies aimed at eradicating poverty. Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP), Poverty Action Fund (PAF) and Plan for Modernisation of Agriculture (PMA) are among them – but with sadly little impact on the ground.

A sizeable number of Ugandans are still living in poverty especially in northern and eastern regions. The regions lag behind in terms of literacy and access to basic services caused by insecurity, inefficient service delivery, corruption and low agricultural productivity.

Elsewhere in the country, a bigger percentage of the poverty action fund (PAF) disappears within the administrative superstructure. The end result is poor or no service delivery to the poor person at the grass root level, who is intended to be the beneficiary.

Narrow scope

The Uganda Poverty Status Report of 2003 subtitled Achievements and Pointers for the PEAP Revision shows that in many sectors of Uganda’s economy, poverty eradication plans are still unachievable.

The report produced by the Ministry of Finance goes ahead to make questionable the implementation of the PMA. PMA was launched in 2000 and its major thrust is the National Agricultural Advisory Service (NAADS). But its scope is very narrow.

NAADS is expected to extend services for modernisation of agriculture, which employs 56% of the poor livelihoods in Uganda. But it operates in a just a few districts and even covers just a few counties within these districts.

In fostering pro-poor growth, government had intended to ensure that the micro-level household incomes are increased. This is yet to be realised. A big number of children, who completed primary school under the universal primary education program, are seated at home because their parents are too poor to raise fees for secondary education.

Improvements – and set backs

Even in the few sectors, petty trade for instance, where incomes are reported to have improved, growth have not translated into welfare improvements for the poorest. The poverty status report 2003, which runs until 2004, recommends the speedy implementation of PMA.

However, according to the report the proportion of the population living below poverty line has declined from 56% by 1992 to 35 % by 2000. But these figures are general for the whole country and in the northern and eastern parts of Uganda the level of poverty is on the rise.

Add to that the recent findings on Uganda’s poverty dynamics made by Lawson and others in 2003. They show that a substantial number of Ugandans has of recent moved backwards into chronic poverty after being non-poor in 1992.

Corruption and coordination

The problems, which still stand in the poverty eradication, are made worse by corruption and poor coordination between the different government programs. And the poverty status report points out the lack of performance indicators and targets for intervention as having aggravated the problem.

The World Bank views good governance and anti-corruption as central to any poverty alleviation mission. It is therefore concentrating on among others, minimising corruption on World Bank funded projects and assisting government to fight corruption.

A discussion paper of March 2002 entitled Challenges and Prospects for Poverty Reduction in Northern Uganda explains that even when services are made available, the core poor are often unable to access them. This is due to lack of money, unfavourable timing, mode of payment and long distances.
The paper, also published by the Ministry of Finance, goes ahead to highlight the Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF) as being likely to empower communities and improve the lives of the disadvantaged.

This is yet to be seen. And for sure, there is still a lot to do and a long way to go before the national projects and funds for eradicating poverty effectively reach the poor and improve their welfare.

Civil society organisations have a big role to play. Both when it comes to support and put pressure on government to fight corruption and improve implementation of pro-poor programs. And when it comes to monitoring the projects and funds and reaching out to the poorest at the grass root level where government has not reached as yet.