The General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) has called on government to consider increasing the budgetary allocation for the country’s agric sector, especially the Planting for Food and Jobs program in light of the current challenges threatening food availability and cost.
The call by GAWU follows an announcement by the Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, that government is working on reviewing all 16 flagship programmes in the country.
Planting for Food and Jobs is a flagship agricultural Campaign of the NPP Government, with five implementation modules.
The first module aims at promoting food security and immediate availability of selected food crops on the market and also provide jobs.
The five Modules are: Food Crops, Planting for Export and Rural Development, Greenhouse Technology Villages, Rearing for Food and Jobs and Agricultural Mechanization Services.
Although the program has been running since 2017, stakeholders have often complained about how it has failed to achieve the results of adequate food supply and job provision.
Generally, the agricultural sector has faced a number of challenges. Key amongst them has been the shortage of maize that hit the country sometime in April 2021.
This resulted in the temporary closure of five feed mills and subsequently resulted in many farmers selling off their birds due to the challenge of feeding them.
There has also been an issue of bird flu, which resulted in the killing of over eleven thousand birds. One other lingering issue has to do with the supply of fertilizer, which has regularly been plagued with smuggling.
Farmers are complaining that their yields will reduce and have called on government to address the situation.
In an interview with Citi Business News, General Secretary of the General Agricultural Workers Union, Edward Kareweh said, with the number of challenges in the sector, government should consider increasing its budgetary allocation while ensuring it gets value for money as it plans to review the policy.
“Now that we are in crisis I think the area that should not lack money should be the agric sector, they should invest more in the agric sector, they should not cut down the support that goes to the agric sector. Having said that, they should maintain the expenditure for the agric sector. What we can also call for is that they must ensure that there is prudent and judicious use of the resources that will go to the agric sector because what we know is that if you even take the agric budget it is not judiciously spent, we have heard over and over that there has been too much smuggling of fertilizer and so on. We are also aware that even when suppliers are supposed to be paid money they are not. This type of management within the agricultural sector is not good. We cannot continue to spend money like this in the agric sector just because it’s the agric sector yet we are not getting benefits from it. We call on government to maintain the budget for the agric sector; they should increase it and ensure that every pesewa brings us value for money”.
