Mr Emmanuel Avoka Asore, the District Chief Executive (DCE) for the Garu-Tempane District in the Upper East Region has urged fertilizer dealers and farmers in the district to help fight the smuggling of the commodity outside the country as it would jeopardize the progress of agriculture.
“I urge you to task yourselves with the responsibility to monitor the movement of fertilizer to ensure that it does not leave the district”, he said.
The Chief Executive made the call at a meeting organised to sensitise farmers and dealers in fertilizer in the district on the need to prevent and protect the input from being smuggled out of the country.
The district shares boundaries with two neighbouring countries, Togo and Burkina Faso, where fertilizer is more expensive and so some people have made it a business to buy at subsidised prices and smuggle it out to sell for profit.
Mr Asore said the Government had subsidised fertilizer to make it affordable for farmers so that they could increase production and create jobs for the people and that purpose had to be achieved to ensure food security.
He pointed out that agriculture was the backbone of the country and promoting its growth would boost the economy since it had all the avenues to create employment for the people.
The DCE urged farmers to see the subsidized fertilizer as their own and protect it from smugglers, because they would be the very people to suffer when there was a shortage of the commodity in the country.
He called on them to register with the district agricultural department so that they could be beneficiaries of the one village one dam project which was yet to commence.
Source: GNA
