The people of Karamoja have been advised to embrace the government-beneficiary co-funding initiative devised to rid the region of dependency syndrome.

For years, Karamoja has been receiving hand-outs ranging from food aid, farm inputs and cash handouts from the Government, NGO’s, Religious institution, Political institutions and other stake holders to improve the livelihood, mitigate the hunger crisis, address malnutrion and hygiene related issues and also to improve level of education among others.

John Lodungokol, the Assistant commissioner crop production at the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industries and Fisheries-MAAIF argues that this approach has made the locals lazy, with most having unrealistic high expectations.

Lodungokol says cabinet has now directed all the ministries and agencies that are channeling aid to Karamoja to use the co-funding initiative to rid the region of dependency syndrome.

The co-funding initiative will see government pay 70% of the total cost of farm inputs while farmers meet 30% of the costs and as the ministry, they have commenced the process of identifying local service providers to deliver farm inputs to the locals at the grass root levels to ensure that farmers can easily access the services.

Lodungokol is certain that with scraping of the dependency syndrome attitude, the locals will become self-reliant rather than depending on free handouts.

Cue//…Lodungokol on co-funding initiative