Maravi

Kasenengwa farmers seek govt help over K600m debt

COMMENT - The Harvest Help Zambia website seems to be defunct. This sort of thing should always be done by the state, so there is accountability and money to compensate the farmers.

Kasenengwa farmers seek govt help over K600m debt
By Christopher Miti in Chipata
Thu 26 Nov. 2009, 04:00 CAT

OVER 100 farmers from Kasenengwa Constituency in Chipata are seeking government's intervention into the delay by Hervest Help to pay them over K600 million for maize sold to the company.

The farmers who besieged the Chipata district commissioner’s office on Tuesday to register their complaint said Harvest Help had not paid them since they sold their maize between July and August.

One of the farmers, Malekano Phiri, who is also Ng'ongwe MMD ward councilor, said it was unfortunate that many farmers had failed to buy farming inputs for this season because of the delay to pay them money.

“What has happened is that we had come to the office of the DC so that we report this matter and the DC delegated the district administrative officer to follow the matter up with the police, so as you can see we are here at police (Chipata Central Police station) fraud department where this issue has been reported,” Phiri said.

He said the farmers had trusted Harvest Help farmer contact person, Raymond Mwale, who was getting maize from them.

“This delay has heavily affected farmers because they will not manage to buy the inputs that they planned to buy for the 2009/2010 farming season and this will also affect them in the 2010 harvest because they will not have maize there will be severe hunger but they have the money they wanted to buy fertiliser,” Phiri said.

He said the farmers did not sign any documents when they sold the maize.

“This Raymond Mwale was using contact farmers who are based in the villagers and they trusted him and his group because they worked with them for a sometime,” he said.

Phiri said the farmers were fed up with the excuses that they were getting from Mwale and his group on the delay to have payments made.

By 16:00 hours on Tuesday, a number of affected farmers were still at Chipata Central Police Station while police summoned some people from Harvest Help.
However, Mwale was not readily available for comment by press time.

Labels: HARVEST HELP, NGOs

posted by MrK @ 11:30 AM