Koboko women receive five tractors to boost commercial agriculture

KOBOKO - Commercial farming in Koboko district is expected to increase after five new tractors were acquired on Women's Day.

The tractors that will be handed over to the district are expected to boost commercial agriculture in the district and eventually deliver the residents into the money economy.

Leila Ariye, the chairperson Women Council Koboko West Division underscored the importance of different government programmes in the empowerment of women in the municipality.

She said the tractors will ease and increase their production and optimise their income using the PDM money.

“Though we live in the municipality where there is no vast land for cultivation with tractors, with the PDM money we have hired lands for production in the rural areas that will need the tractor services, so this has come timely at the time when rain is about to begin,” Ariye said.

Koboko Woman Member of Parliament Dr Sharifa Aate Amin said she was touched by the fact that despite the vast and fertile lands in the district, the communities continue to live a poor life with the lands staying idle without being cultivated for commercial purposes.

According to her, the women who have been most affected by subsistence farming due to their pivotal role in fending for their families.

Aate envisions that the tractor services that will be hired at minimal costs to the women individually and in groups will help transform them to embrace value addition in the wake of Parish Development Model intervention.

“I have been moving to other parts of the country and I realised that even the mountains are covered with food production while for us the vast lands are staying idle,” Aate said.

Muni University secretary Emmanuel Banya Natal acknowledged the impact of empowerment programmes for women in the district as he appealed for the focus to shift rural women most of whom have not gone through formal education.

“Most of the school dropouts are in the villages and we need deliberate action to lift the girls and women from rural areas who are still being seen as sources of Labour and childbearing human beings” Said Banya.

Koboko municipality mayor Wilson Sanya commended the Government for deliberate women empowerment programmes while decrying the alarming school dropout rates among girls in the municipality.

The assistant Resident District Commissioner Koboko Jonathan K. Joel challenged the stakeholders to fight bad cultural practices by ensuring access to land for women.