President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has promised compensation to all victims maimed or killed by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and their families supported by the government, pointing out however that people who lost property would not fall into this category.

President Museveni was addressing various rallies in Lira town, north of Kampala on Wednesday where he donated some money to the former abductees’ and returnees’ group whom he encouraged to join savings groups.

During the address, the President also said that while the government was fulfilling its obligation of developing the infrastructure, it is the people’s responsibility to fight poverty at the household level and promote food security.

President Museveni also announced an introduction of 700 oxen, 350 plows and 350 heifers for all the parishes in Lira District, which is steadily recovering from the effects of the 20 year insurgency, to kick start an experimental boost in commercial agriculture production for the rural families in the region. He said this will help support families to embrace agriculture for boosting incomes and for food security.

The President also disclosed government plans to promote animal tractions in the Northern region to boost commercial agriculture production.

The President congratulated the people on the peace process, adding that this was made possible because of the people’s support and the army. He however rejected the idea of talking to rebel leader Joseph Kony or reading the Bible to him, adding that if a person kills another intentionally, it would be difficult to change him even if you preach to him.

“The solution is to deal with him in the same way. They wasted time there. The method could not work, so we used the army to finish them. The remnants fled to the Central African Republic and now in Darfur,” he said.

The President said peace had returned to the region and was here to stay and urged the people to support the ruling party which he said had built a professional army that managed to return peace to the north.

He said while the leaders had emphasized various development projects, including power, roads, schools etc, it was time to focus on the basic issues like promoting household incomes and food security.

Source African Press Agency

African News from NetNewsPublisher.com

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