By Eddie Ssejjoba
The Ministry of Local Government has pledged to continue supporting dairy farmers’ co-operatives in cattle-keeping districts as one of the interventions to boost household incomes for farmers in rural areas.
This is also intended to widen the tax base for the selected local governments.
The support, among others, includes training community-based artificial insemination technicians at parish and sub-county levels.
Ben Kumumanya, the local government ministry permanent secretary, said that through the Local Economic Growth Support (LEGS) project, the ministry has supported dairy farmers’ cooperatives in the districts of Kibuku, Katakwi, Kumi, Kyenjojo, Nakaseke and Gomba.
It has also provided each of the districts with six milk collection centres installed with milk coolers of 5,000 litres of storage capacity.
In addition, the ministry has also trained over 1,217 dairy farmers to acquire more detailed knowledge about artificial insemination and about the merits and limitations in the technology, mainly in livestock production.
Artificial insemination is also intended to reduce the many risks involved with animal breeding, including using bulls for breeding purposes. It is also a strategy for improving the breeds of cattle and therefore increased production.
The ministry believes that artificial insemination is a 100 percent climate change adaptation activity and wants to use it to adapt the indigenous livestock breeds to more productive and resistant ones.
In the beneficiary districts, the ministry has also rehabilitated strategic community access roads linking to major trade routes to enable market access for all-year round.
According to Kumumanya, the ministry has also so far sponsored 90 community-based artificial inseminators for training at the National Animal Genetics Resource Centre in Entebbe and procured 90 artificial insemination toolkits with semen straws, storage tanks for semen and motorcycles for mobility.
“All these efforts are meant to bring the artificial insemination services close to the end-users using the community-based technicians as the delivery mechanism,” he said.
The PS made the remarks during a recent graduation ceremony for 90 community-based artificial insemination technicians after completing a training programme on artificial insemination at Ruhenjere Farm Field Station in Kiruhura district.
The training, which had both theoretical and practical sessions, was organized by the local government ministry, in conjunction with National Animal Genetic Resource Centre and Databank (NAGRIC-DB) and funded by the Ugandan government and the Lives and Livelihood Fund.
The LEGS project, implemented with support from the Islamic Development Bank, and the Lives and Livelihoods Fund, is being implemented in the districts of Alebtong, Bunyangabu, Gomba, Kabarole, Katakwi, Kibuku, Kumi, Kyenjojo, Nakaseke, and Ntoroko.
To achieve its development objective, Kumumanya stated, the project has prioritized interventions which will address some of the most binding constraints along value chains for predominant enterprises in the targeted districts.
It is also one of the several vehicles the ministry has deployed to operationalize the National Policy on Local Economic Development (LED), which was adopted in 2014.
He explained that the LED project gives effect to the sixth objective of decentralization geared towards promoting local economic development for increased household incomes to widen the tax base for local governments.
Kumumanya commended cooperatives to whom the artificial insemination technicians will be anchored, saying the ministry considers them as long-term partners and ambassadors for the insemination services in their respective districts.
LEAD PHOTO CAPTION: The PS ministry of local government, Ben Kumumanya handing over insermination toolkits to some of the community-based technicians after their training in Kiruhura.
