Planting for foods and jobs program is one of the social intervention policies by the Nana led NPP government introduced to bring relief to most farmers. Especially, farmers in the Upper West, East and Northern regions of Ghana.
Since this program started last year, it has supported most farmers in terms of access to fertilizer and availability of improved seeds for farming.
Farmers have since had a great relief of going through difficulties to get money to buy fertilizers in the open.
Now, farmers can easily buy these fertilizers because government has subsidized almost half of the amount and farmers pay the remaining half.
Last year, even the half price farmers were required to pay was also divided into halves for farmers to pay part before the farming season and pay the remaining half after the farming. However, as humans, most people could not pay back their remaining half causing government to review the policy on the method of payment and method of picking the fertilizer from the warehouse.
For Last year, because of the low recovery rate, the whole policy has been reviewed to improve efficiency in the system. It was based on this the former NPP constituency secretary in Sissala East granted a panel conversation to Radford FM yesterday on their evening current affairs program, titled, “Trending issues”.
As we speak this year, the fertilizers for the two Sissala districts have not arrived yet because of the fear of smuggling by some dealers in the community. Due to this change, there has been a delay of the release of fertilizer or coupons so that farmers can buy fertilizers in the open market at the same subsidized price. When asked, Hon. Benin Sulemani who was once an assembly member for Kpeviera-Yalia electoral area, said that the introduction of this PFJ program brought great relief to him personally and most farmers.
He added that, fertilizer came as low as ghs28 per bag and no reasonable farmer would walk to him to buy something he or she can also equally buy. Hon. Sulemani said, If this program fails, the burden will come to most of them people look up to in the community. He therefore adviced the leaders for the two Sissala districts to sit up and allow a task force to monitor the collection and distribution of the fertilizer that enter the two districts so that it does not fail. He also added that the MCE and DCE should not only sit in their offices and think everything is going on well but should also from time to time conduct some research to see if farmers have received the fertilizers and how they are using them to increase the recovery rate.
Hon. Benin also added that l, having learnt some lessons from the last farming season, the government has brought some light changes into the system, he said instead of farmers paying half and paying the rest later, this time, they would pay all the half before they access the fertilizer and also government will no longer bring fertilizers but will allow agents to buy this fertilizer and thus farmers can buy from them at a reduced government subsidise price.
Other speakers on the panel discussion included a former DCE Hon. Robert Baka and a former assembly member for Zongo electoral area Hon. Fuseini Liman aka 24hours, 24hours also said if the government is serious on reducing smuggling then they should distribute the fertilizers that come to the various Fascons warehouses in some of the selected communities in the area. He said this alone will reduce the pressure in the municipal capital giving way for people to monitor their activities, it is a good policy introduced by the government but if they also let it fail it can dwindle their chances in the two Sissala districts -he added.
Hon. Robert on the other hand believes that the district does not have a strong data base about the amount of fertilizer that comes in and the amount of fertilizer that leaves the district, he said if they have how come some bags could not be accounted for, he said the local leaders in the district should rise above all other things and put the right measures in place to make the program successful here.
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