District Chief Executive Officer for the Asuogyaman constituency, Mr. Samuel Kwame Agyekum has admitted that though money is critical in running the government’s ‘planting for food and jobs’ campaign in the Asuogyaman district, the district assembly equally has the responsibility of generating its own funds to support the project.
Mr. Agyekum who was speaking in an interview with Rite news indicated that though a lot of inputs are given out to the various agric departments for the smooth running of the government’s policy of ‘planting for food and jobs’, the Asuogyaman district assembly would nevertheless intensify its revenue generation through the Internally Generated Funds to enable it make its own financial inputs into the project.
His assertions come in the wake of concerns raised by the agric director for the Asuogyaman district, Mr. David Dokli to the effect that his outfit was challenged in the implementation of the government’s ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ policy due to the absence of financial commitments. According to him, though the department had received some inputs from the government towards the implementation of the project, there was no money dedicated to the implementation of the programme.
But Mr. Agyekum argues that the assembly also has the responsibility of investing in the policy due to its status as a ‘special project.’
‘The government’s planting for food and jobs policy is a special project from the ministry of Agric and so instead of giving the Agric Directors money to pilot the program, they were rather given inputs like fertilizers, improved seeds among others. The main rationale behind the agenda is to provide more jobs for the people and so we are going towards that as a district by investing into the programme so that we can achieve our objectives as a government” he stated.
According to him, the Asuogyaman district under the policy received one hundred and sixty three thousand (163,000) seeds of maize, three thousand (3,000) NPK and one thousand five hundred urine fertilizers without any physical money which is not enough for the district.
He underscored the district’s status as a leading producer of maize and cassava which he argued puts it in a strategic position for the government’s planting for food and jobs initiative. He therefore asserted that the district assembly would push and invest in the production of these produce of the Asuogyaman district where available markets would be created for them.
In order to achieve these, the Asuogyaman district assembly has distributed some inputs to its agric department to be distributed to farmers in order to drive the project.
Source: ritefmonline.org
