There is need for physical planning for parish devt model
Paul Magimbi
What you need to know:
- We produce what is not fit for the external markets. Government should also learn to negotiate within international markets for local produce so that farmers may be able to get financial value from their produce.
Successful implementation of the Parish Development Model will require proper land use planning and the availability of ready markets, both local and international.
It will also be necessary to engage the services of Physical Planning in the implementation of the Parish Development Model. Physical Planning is the spatial expression of the desired form of social and economic development.
It entails organisation of land use so as to enjoy the highest achievable degree of efficiency of resource utilization, functionality of places and aesthetic quality. Its purpose is to create and maintain a framework for more balanced spatial development countrywide, through a rational arrangement of land uses in space, protection of the environment, and their alignment with long-term government objectives for sustainable economic and social development.
Government has made significant efforts to ensure planned and orderly development. This has been through the enactment of relevant legislation to guide physical planning ensuring that Local Governments have approved physical development plans to guide planning, and offering technical assistance to the Local Governments. It is also enacted that soon as physical development plan is approved, detailed physical development plans are prepared.
Although Local Governments have approved Physical Development Plans, there have been no Detailed Physical Development Plans prepared, as required by the Act, in the implementation of the Parish Development Model, by both public and private sector institutions at the central and local government levels, detailed physical development plans prepared by physical planners will be necessary.
In this country, the agriculture sector has always suffered a lack of two areas namely planning and ready markets, leading to losses and discouragement from further production.
Although agricultural land use is, perhaps, the most important land sector activity with its major economic resource of this country, the government has not yet adopted a vigorous programme of rural development intended to provide employment for the increasing rural population and to bring the areas of subsistence farming within the cash economy.
Land productivity, potential, capability and sustainability for agriculture is not well articulated. Agricultural zones, although self-evident, are not demarcated for production. This makes it difficult to allocate land for agriculture to its most optimal and suitable use. Therefore, agricultural production in this country has no relationship to land productivity. Worse still agricultural land is degraded daily by uncontrolled human activities including sprawling urbanisation, industrialisation, mineral extraction and dumping of both industrial and domesticwaste materials,
The availability of markets for agricultural produce calls for innovation and value addition for the production surplus. Government has to embark upon a concerted sensitisation programme of farmers on better farming and harvesting skills so that Ugandan produce commands a bigger market both locally and on the international markets, including places where it is being rejected over poor quality as well as containing too much chemicals.
We produce what is not fit for the external markets. Government should also learn to negotiate within international markets for local produce so that farmers may be able to get financial value from their produce.
For the Parish Development Model to be a success story the government must directly involve farmers and all stakeholders in this programme starting from the planning stage up to the implementation stage. The whole programme should be monitored and evaluated from time to time.
Paul Magimbi
