Stanley Ebele
The community of Lolelia South in Kaabong district has outlined a list of key priorities for service delivery that the district and sub-county leadership need to address.
One of the top priorities on their agenda is the need to open the Lolelia South-Kopoth road, which connects farmers from the green belt to the market in Kaabong town.
Lolelia has the potential to be a food hub in North Karamoja, but farmers there face transportation challenges due to the poor state of the road, which is crossed by three seasonal rivers. The road has reportedly not been repaired for several years.
Hanifa Namuya and Fiona Engor, both farmers in the settlement, have called on the district authorities to grade the road to provide farmers with much-needed access to the market.
Other priorities identified by the community include upgrading Kolimeu Health Centre II to Health Centre III to offer maternal and health services, opening a primary school in the area, and compensating farmers for crops lost to wildlife.
These priorities were presented to the sub-county leadership on Tuesday during community dialogues organized by PAG Social Development Arm, aimed at trauma healing in post-conflict communities in Kotido and Kaabong.
The trauma experienced by these communities includes suffering caused by a lack of service delivery, especially in education and health, as well as theft of livestock or destruction of crops by wildlife, which has left the communities traumatized.
PAG Social Development Services is working to provide a platform to reduce conflict by engaging communities in dialogue with duty bearers.
Regarding roads, the LC 3 Chairperson, John Bosco Omo, stated that the district engineering department has written to the Ministry of Works and Transport through Kotido Sub Station for their intervention.
Lolelia South is one of the settlements in North Karamoja whose population is struggling to access services such as education, health, and security.
The PAG Kotido Pastorate, through its Social Development Services Department, is implementing a Trauma Healing and Peace Building project in Lolelia South in Kaabong district, Kacheri Town Council, and Kacheri Sub County in Kotido district for a period of two years.
The project aims to promote peaceful coexistence among the multicultural post-conflict communities of Karamoja. Lolelia South and Kacheri Sub County in Kaabong and Kotido, respectively, are settlement areas whose populations are suffering from poor service delivery.
This lack of essential services has left hundreds traumatized due to the absence of educational, health, water, and infrastructure services.
Local governments in these areas are still struggling to provide services, with much of their work still in the planning stages. The demand for services is increasing, exacerbating the challenges faced by these communities.
To address these gaps, PAG conducted community engagement meetings through Community Based Facilitators.
The goal was to identify critical service gaps and present them to duty bearers at Sub County and District level engagement meetings. The aim is to scale up service delivery through a bottom-up approach.
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