Maravi

Lufwanyama farmers demand refund over undelivered inputs

COMMENT - Government is not a remote control issue - but try telling that to the neoliberals, who want the markets to take care of everything, even when it blatantly isn't doing so. They need to start taxing the mines and start to do their job.

Lufwanyama farmers demand refund over undelivered inputs
By Mwila Chansa in Kitwe
Wed 05 Jan. 2011, 03:59 CAT

FARMERS in Lufwanyama district on the Copperbelt say the government should pay them back the money they used to purchase farming inputs that they have not collected to date.

The visibly annoyed farmers in a walk-in interview at The Post office in Kitwe complained that there had been delays in giving inputs to most cooperatives in the district despite having paid for them about two months ago.

“So I think government should immediately ensure that we are given our inputs or if they fail, then they should refund us our money with interest because time is fast running out for us to use those inputs,” said Howard Chipaya, one of the affected farmers.

Chipaya said he and other members of the cooperative he belongs to deposited the money for the farming inputs on November 2, 2010 and were given authority to collect the inputs on November 11 but that to date inputs had not been collected.

He said whenever farmers went to Nyiombo Investments to follow up the matter, they were given excuses and told to check later.

“We have made 15 trips from Lufwanyama to Kitwe; we don’t know what’s happening. These people are really wasting our time. They should realise that we are not just farmers, we are family men who have other responsibilities,” Chipaya added.

He said other farmers that had not had the opportunity to travel to Kitwe were running out of patience and suspecting their colleagues that were always travelling to Kitwe of squandering the money.

Chipaya urged the government to learn to fulfil its promises, adding that farmers were not interested in hearing whether or not the government would renew the contract with Nyiombo and that all they were interested in was getting their inputs.

And another farmer, Abison Makwalo, observed that the farmer input support programme was failing because the government lacked inspection skills.

He said the government should not expect things to operate on a ‘remote control’ basis.

Makwalo added that because of lack of monitoring and evaluation, it was unlikely that the bumper harvest recorded during last season’s farming season would be sustained.

Labels: FARMERS, FISP

posted by MrK @ 4:27 PM