Officer In-charge of Special Duties on Planting for Food and Jobs, Kofi Baffour Amoh II, has described smuggling of fertilizer in the Northern part of the country as a disease that is likened unto deadly Coronavirus.
Mr. Amoh at a workshop admonished stakeholders to ensure that people within their ranks stop fertilizer smuggling adding that, the situation if not checked will threaten the sustenance of the Planting for Food and Job programme.
“We have realized that if we do not stop this smuggling of fertilizer, in future, planting for food and jobs will collapse because after we reviewed that of 2017 and 2018,2019 and 2020, we saw that, diversion of coupons and unaccounted for fertilizer is costing government GHs120 million,” he lamented.
According to the Planting for Food and Jobs Secretariat, of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Ghana lost a whopping GHS120 million from unaccounted for fertilizer, diversion of coupons and fertilizer smuggling in the 2017 and 2018 planting seasons.
For Mr. Amoh, the development has become worrying and if steps are not taken to address it, the country will continue to lose its agriculture strength to her neighbours.
“I have written a report that is going to the Central Region. They were not able to account for 1,288 coupons over the period and if you multiply this by 68, it is about GHS87,584.00 and this happened in the regional office, not the district offices. So, if we don’t stop these smuggling and other things, before we realize, the programme will collapse. For you in the North, you have to wake up and help us to completely destroy this disease of fertilizer smuggling because this disease is like Coronavirus”.
The Upper East Regional Director of the MOFA, Francis Ennor indicated that the directorate, is working to restrict the number of input dealers for the sale of government-subsidized fertilizers, particularly in fertilizer smuggling prone areas. This he said will help to curb the smuggling menace.
“So, this year we do not want to have issues of fertilizer smuggling in the region thus the need for stakeholders to map out strategies to end the menace. As a result, in some districts we have restricted the number of people who can sell government-subsidized fertilizer this year, so ten input dealers have been selected and authorized for the sale of subsidized fertilizer in Bawku Municipal, Bawku West, Pusiga, Garu-Tempane, and Kassena-Nankana West Districts”.
