Young people across the country have called on the government to ditch the youth enterprise tax that was earmarked to benefit from the Parish Development Model (PDM).
The youth made the call during the plenary session of the Fifth National Youth Parliament where they observed that the current design of PDM may not benefit them if they want to compete with other established businesses.
“I am a farmer, but you can see that the input taxes for us are the same as for other well-known farmers. We would ask for a reduction in taxes for the youth,” said Jacqueline Namutebi from the Central Region.
Demos Paryo Agamba from West Nile said many youth businesses collapsed due to high taxes which he felt were objectionable. “Do you know how many youth projects have died? We need a fair tax policy to protect youth businesses,” Agamba said.
He petitioned for a tax holiday for youth projects to participate in the PDM.
On Friday, August 5, 2022, the Fifth Republican Youth Parliament was held.
The youth have adopted an initiative that calls on the government to identify priority measures for the economic transformation of youth through PDM.
Young people were concerned that they had not been consulted on the PDM, while some claimed that some parishes did not have youth representatives on the PDM committees.
“This country has youth leaders at all levels, but when you go to the PDM committees in different parishes, there is a deliberate effort to sideline youth leaders from decision-making,” said Priska Akela, youth representative, Kitgum district.
The youth were also concerned that the money they had allocated to PDM was not enough when other government youth livelihood programs were phased out in favor of PDM.
“Even the 30 per cent for the youth is not 30 per cent of the PDM money, but a share of the money earmarked for the PDM groups,” said Vicky Namugabe of Sironko.
The Youth Parliament decreed that the government either allocate 30 percent of the total PDM budget to the youth or allocate Sh100 billion as annual capitalization of the Youth Livelihood Fund.
The meeting also adopted a motion in which the youth called on the government to identify priority measures to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of the Parliament of the Republic of Uganda.
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