The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) is set to start collecting data for the community profiling module under the Parish Development Model (PDM) program in the Acholi subregion.
The exercise according to UBOS officials will kick off on Monday at all parishes in the subregion and will take at least two weeks.
James Muwonge, the Director of Methodology and Statistical Coordination Services at UBOS says the exercise will focus on collecting data on available services in all the Parishes across the subregion.
According to Muwonge, common services such as health facilities, infrastructures, schools, and water sources among others will be profiled to help in providing updated data to support the implementation of PDM.
He says the same data will also support the local government in making decisive resource allocation based on a proper understanding of the availability or shortage of services in the respective parishes.
Muwonge says the Acholi sub-region was chosen second after Karamoja based on the past 2021 survey report on the Poverty index which portrayed the two regions as being the poorest in the country. He notes that the data collection will support the government in understanding why the regions have remained poor among others in the country.
At least two officials each comprising Information Technology (IT) and district Planners from the nine districts and Gulu City in the region have been undergoing training on using community profiling tools in Gulu City for the last two days.
Muwonge says those trained are expected to impart their skills to the Parish chiefs in their respective districts on Friday before the data collection exercise is rolled out on Monday next week.
Gulu District Chief Administrative Officer Ismail Ochengel however said they faced a serious challenge in conducting data profiling exercises in the past UBOS activity due to a lack of financial support from the parish chiefs.
UBOS launched a country-wide data profiling exercise in June last year but the activity failed to deliver due to complaints from parish chiefs over facilitation.
He said some of the parishes lagged behind in the activity and called on the government to prioritize facilitating the parish chiefs to ease their work.
But Lydia Tuhaise, the Principal Statistician clarified that the government has this time allocated resources that will carter for airtime and data bundle, transport, and data collection allowances for the parish chiefs. She acknowledged that lack of facilitation greatly affected the data profiling exercise since the majority of the parish chiefs abandoned the work.
“Last year, no facilitation was given to the Parish chiefs and most of them paid less attention to the activity. They complained that the exercise needed them to transport themselves and data for uploading information which they never had the resources for,” she told URN in an interview.
Gulu District, in particular, the community profiling exercise is expected to be conducted in 47 parishes.
The government rolled out PDM, a program meant to eradicate poverty through the execution of development activities at the parishes in February last year. The initiative targets to lift 17.5 million Ugandans in 3.5 million households out of poverty into the money economy.