The President of the Ghana National Cocoa Farmers Association(GNACOFA) Mr. Anane Boateng has called on politicians to desist from playing political cards with the cocoa sector because Ghana’s cocoa sector risks a dip if the country fails to address the politicization of the sector.
According to GNACOFA, the issue has affected the growth of the cocoa sector as politicians have over the years, used cocoa’s prospects to their gain.
The warning also comes at a time where both political parties battling which government has contributed to the development of the cocoa sector.
Ghana National Cocoa Farmers Association(GNACOFA) Mr. Anane Boateng advised the government to involve the sector players in policy implementation to also contributed to boost production and to educate farmers on the real price fluctuations on the international market to avert the perennial apprehension among them.
He added, “In my view, the government has failed to do that; in a way it comes across to the farmers as how much is the government going to give me which is a government policy and that is why now when prices are increasing, government can take credit for it and when prices are declining like now, they have to find a way to take the price up as a government…if they don’t, farmers will then think and say that government is not paying me well so stabilization is difficult.”
The Ghana National Cocoa Farmers Association(GNACOFA) has held sensitization training for cocoa farmers to enhancing cocoa farming in Ghana with the “theme “smallholders cocoa farmers to be united as one people for better a country at Efiduase in Sekyere East District of the Ashanti Region.
Mr. Anane Boateng said cocoa farmers have been failed by the successive government with stillborn promises. “Successive governments always Promise Farmers but we don’t see anything , especially the current government led by His excellency Nana Addo Dankwa and his Agric ministry, they must use our bonuses as National Health lnsurance to farmers , this is because our people in rural areas are suffering and the failed promises are too much” he lamented.
The politician always promise cocoa farmers during the campaign but when they get into power they abandon us. Cocoa farmers are really suffering especially in rural areas, COCOBOD has been in the country for 70 years now but what has been their impact in the cocoa sector”? He rhetorically asked.
He humbly appealed to the government to speed up the implementation of the pension scheme for the cocoa farmers and also seek to strengthen the cocoa mass spraying exercises in the cocoa growing areas across the country to reduce disease control to improve production.
By: Austin Ofori Addo/ritefmonline.org
