Members of parliament under the Uganda Parliamentarians Forum on Food Security, Population and Development have demanded a trillion shillings budget for the agriculture sector. Speaking to journalists at parliament the secretary General for this forum and MP for Kakuto county, Mathias Kasamba, said that its time for the government to find a big budget for agriculture sector since there is much investment that has been done in key sectors.
Kasamba said that each person should have a capacity to feed himself or herself by having enough food at the homestead instead of waiting to be fed. He said that government should have addition of new agricultural technologies to boost food production. Kasamba said that Uganda is still having food deficit despite some government intervention, calling for the people to have shared responsibility of growing enough food for local consumption and export.
The member of parliament for Kyadondo north, Kasule Sebunya, said that government should change its policy and directly involve in agriculture production instead of leaving the sector under private hands.
The speaker of parliament Rebecca Kadaga also challenged member countries of the Inter Parliamentary Union to set aside a contingency fund to cater for migrants seeking refuge in the various countries. Kadaga said that when migrants move in large numbers they have an impact on the state of the environment and also put pressure on the local facilities, the local leadership and the local communities of the places in which they land.
Kadaga was addressing the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly currently meeting in Geneva, on the Assembly theme: The moral and economic imperative for fairer, smarter and more humane migration. She said that its time for the countries to put into place contingency funds to cater for the possibility of housing, feeding and settling migrants in large numbers.
The speaker also complained about the bulk of the profits repatriated to the investor’s countries and not leaving much in the local country. She said It is important that the developed countries invest in infrastructure and industries to create jobs in the less developed countries.
