President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has announced that the program to compensate every household in the Acoli, Lango, and Teso sub-regions for lost cattle will resume after the general elections.
Addressing his last campaign rally in Lango on Thursday, Museveni explained that the cattle compensation process is what halted his campaign in Lira and Kole.
“We gave them 159 billion, but we are not hearing any impact. So I decided, let me call people from the area, and we consult, and I called big meetings in Teso, in Lango, in Acoli, and they all said, most of them said no, that’s not a good way.”
He tasked the Minister of State for Northern Uganda Rehabilitation, Kenneth Omona Olusegun, to tell the people of Lango where the money is at the moment, to which Omona said it is in the office of the Prime Minister.
The NRM’s presidential candidate, however, explained that the issue now is about the old list of beneficiaries, which had a lot of problems, a reason why there is a delay to allow the responsible people to generate a new list.
In March 2022, the President officially launched the cattle compensation program, and the government has spent 43.66 billion shillings to compensate a few claimants in the Acholi sub-region, leaving 12,110 more claimants still awaiting payment. In the Lango sub-region, 42,024 claimants were registered, but only 12,389 received compensation at a cost of 48.73 billion shillings, whereas in the Teso sub-region, 65.65 billion shillings was spent to compensate 11,056 out of the 33,664 claimants registered.
However, due to persistent issues of corruption, middlemen, and bureaucratic hurdles, which for long hindered its progress, under the new program, the funds will reach the intended beneficiaries via mobile money. The process is meant to take at least 5 years.
Just last week, Minister Omona announced that the first batch of beneficiaries would receive their money before the presidential elections.
The Government of Uganda has a plan to repay residents in the three sub-regions for livestock lost during past conflicts, with recent plans shifting towards a fixed-rate payment of five cows valued at 5 million shillings per household.
