The Director of Crop Services at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Mr. Seth Akoto Osei has appealed to Ghanaians to help fight against fertilizer smuggling, a vice he described as hindering the progress of the government flagship policy planting for food and jobs.
Speaking to Rite Morning Ride, he said Government’s Agriculture support programme, Planting for Food and Jobs (PJF) has suffered a huge loss through smuggling of the subsidized fertilizer meant for farmers under the initiative by some devious persons to neighbouring countries including Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali and as far as Cameroon during the last farming season.
The situation Mr. Akoto Osei said if not curb will bring negative impact on the program, hence the need for Ghanaians to feed the ministry with appropriate information to track those whose actions and inaction will collapse the program.
Director of crop services at the Ministry Seth Akoto Osei mentioned that, 50,000 bags of fertilizer were smuggled outside the country under the coupon system last year which has since been scrapped.
According to him, most distributors and retailers lost thousands of Ghana cedis to the ministry as fake fertilizer coupons were used to access fertilizers under the planting for food and jobs hence new modalities have been rolled out for this year’s farming season to stop the smuggling that characterized last year’s season.
Mr. Akoto further said as part of the new modalities, all seeds and fertilizers under the planting for Food and Jobs programme shall be labelled with the PFJ logo.
Fertilizer distributors and retailers will also require the services of NABCO officials before distributing to farmers while Regional Ministers and District/Municipal Chief Executives would be receiving and examining waybills covering fertilizers that arrive in their jurisdictions.
He said the Ministry has also introduced a software and coding system which would code and track goods that are issued by retailers and distributors emphasizing, the new modalities have replaced the coupon system.
Adding, the Planting for Food and Jobs seeds and fertilizers are bagged with PFJ labels and farmers in the five regions of the North shall be entitled to 25kg of fertilizers, NPK and Urea at a cost of GHC37.50 and GHC35.00 respectively; whilst their colleagues in the South, 50kg at a cost of GHC75 for NPK and GHC70.00 for Urea.
“Fertilizers and seeds distributors and retailers in the various regions will have to liaise with recruited NABCO officials under the supervision of MMDCEs, to distribute fertilizers to the sale outlets. NABCO employees will be placed at all retail outlets to supervise and record the quantities of fertilizers and seeds being sold to farmers to curb smuggling,” Mr. Akoto said.
2,700 extension officers he said, will be recruited this year to augment timely services to farmers.
Adding that among the five pillars of the policy, seeds and fertilizer has well been established therefore lauded the government for his frantic effort to improve the sector by recruiting extension officers to support the program.
By: Austin Ofori Addo/ritefmonline.org/austinofori.addo@gmail.com
