Builsa South Commercial Farmers Association has explained that the recent scramble for fertilizers couple with the shortage in the district can never be attributed to being the fault of the association as its main goal is to produce as much food as possible for Ghanaians.
The Association says the comment made by the Upper East Regional Director of Agriculture, Francis Ennor that its members should be blamed for the shortage of the subsidized fertilizer under the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme is not accurate.
The Director who last spoke on Newslink on A1 Radio regarding fertilizer shortages noted that some commercial farmers in the Builsa South District did not make good use of the government’s Planting for Food and Jobs programme under the Savannah Zone Agricultural Productivity Improvement Project (SAPIP) last year.
According to him, the agreed deal was that the project will help the farmers with any quantity of fertilizers and afterwards they will pay back but majority of the farmers have refused to pay for the fertilizers owed, the reason the project has also refused to support them this year.
But reacting to the Director’s comment, Secretary to the Association, Daniel Atulik agreed that though some of their members have not paid, they can not entirely be at fault as the project, in the beginning, did not spell out that they will pay for the fertilizers after usage.
He stressed that some of their members who trooped for the fertilizers thoughts it was a gift from the government as the initiative came at the time of the 2020 elections.
Mr Atulik further explained that another reason their members are finding it difficult to pay was that the project implementers failed to add bank transactions to their payment system.
“Some of us who later understood the arrangement wanted to pay for the fertilizers but the challenge was the means of payment. They(Implementers) did not give us any bank account to pay, so, some of us were and are still afraid to pay the money into individuals’ hands.”
He, therefore, hinted that they as farmers will be meeting with the project implementers of the Savannah Zone Agricultural Productivity Improvement Project (SAPIP) to find solutions to the unfortunate situation.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1 MHz| Moses Apiah| Ghana
