Maravi

(HERALD) Govt in drive to resuscitate all irrigation schemes

Govt in drive to resuscitate all irrigation schemes
Herald Reporter

GOVERNMENT has embarked on a multi-billion-dollar capital intensive mechanisation project to resuscitate all irrigation schemes to boost the country’s food security. The Minister of Agriculture Engineering and Mechanisation, Dr Joseph Made, said the programme will start with irrigation equipment that was installed on A2 farms, before moving to A1 and communal farmers.

The project is being taken so seriously that Dr Made has ordered all workers at the ministry’s head office, except his secretary, to leave for field work until February next year.

Dr Made said this during an orientation meeting with officials from the department of irrigation, which has now been moved to his office from the Ministry of Water Resources and Infrastructural Development.

"Our mandate is to look at A2 farmers and we should resuscitate all irrigation that was there before. We need to do this with speed, like yesterday, like lightning, that is the hallmark of our operations."Within that mandate of resuscitating, we will be looking at centre pivots, flood irrigation and sprinkler irrigation. Farmers need to get designs of their irrigation requirements and give us a quotation.

"We will be paying on a first-come-first-serve basis," said Cde Made.

He said the department of irrigation should spend most of its time on the field assisting farmers both with advice and training.

"My mandate is to ensure that you are in the field.

"Don’t waste time coming to Harare for meetings, we want you to be in the field helping farmers and not wasting time attending meetings here in Harare. The country cannot continue importing maize and wheat when it has water reservoirs that are not being utilised," he said.

He said there should be an irrigation engineer at district level so as to be as close as possible with farmers and not the current set up where an engineer was being found at provincial level.

He said there was need for the department to engage in training of farmers on irrigation schemes just as what happened recently where farmers were trained how to use combine harvesters and other sophisticated equipment.

"The hallmark of our operations would be to have an engineer at district level because each tractor that we have distributed would be fitted with a dynamo to pump water.

"There is need for efficient utilisation of water.

"We would be putting in place a capital intensive outlay running into trillions, so that should not be put to waste," said Dr Made.

The minister urged the department to come up with a 50-year plan.

Labels: IRRIGATION, JOSEPH MADE, THE HERALD, ZIMBABWE

posted by MrK @ 4:32 AM