The Upper West Regional Youth Organiser of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mustapha Goveir, has denied that top guns of the party have a hand in the disappearance of 20,000 bags of subsidised fertiliser for peasant farmers in the region.
An allegation was made by the national organiser and president of the local chapter of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, Shiraz Jawol, that the subsidised fertilisers are smuggled to neighbouring Burkina Faso and sold for higher profit by some leading members of the NPP.
But speaking to Class News, Mr Govier said: “If the dealers are NPP members, they are Ghanaians and entitled to do business. Where the problem is is how to get the subsidised fertiliser to our people. That is our main concern as a government and as a political party.
“So I don’t know the people he [Shiraz Jawol] has pinpointed as sympathisers of the NPP who are the dealers of fertiliser. I know as a regional youth organiser, a member of the region and son of the region, I know the key distributors in the region. Those who actually receive the fertilisers from Accra are not sympathisers of NPP, but that is not our hurdle. Our hurdle is that 20,000 bags of fertiliser are supposed to come to the region to be given to our farmers but our investigations showed that less than half of it have gotten to our peasant farmers and that is our biggest challenge and we have made all we can to make sure that the 20,000 bags that were allocated to the region actually get to our people.
“As a government we are doing everything…our regional minister met the distributors with the DCEs in the region and supervised the allocations to the various districts and are making sure they get to the districts and to the farmers… He [Shiraz Jawol] should have come out with names so that we can prove whether those people are NPP or NDC. But if they are NPP and they are doing the right business, we have no problem. If they are NDC and are doing the right business, we have no problem, but under this administration we wouldn’t sit aloof and watch people hoard fertilisers or export to Burkina Faso. We will make sure that every bag remains in Ghana.”
Meanwhile, the Regional Coordinating Council has placed a cap on the number of bags of subsidised fertiliser a farmer can receive no matter the farm size. Each farmer is entitled to 10 bags of subsidised fertiliser.
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
