Admitting that he couldn’t “vouch for those figures,” the Union’s General Secretary, Edward Kareweh said on Eyewitness News that the number will have to be treated to more scrutiny.

[contextly_sidebar id=”fc9ZFqTTlABK8GmMdQZRdQhwmXgbUGnl”]The Food and Agriculture Minister, Dr. Afriyie Akoto announced that 745,000 jobs had been created under the first phase of the Planting for Food and Jobs programme with the caveat that the jobs were “unofficial jobs.”

The minister explained to the media that the jobs were created in rural areas and were essentially not taxable and did not contribute to pension funds following the earlier scepticism that met the announced figure.

The figures were based on the number of additional inputs as well as improved seeds and fertilizers supplied to participating farmers in 2017.

Jobs must be tangible

Mr. Kareweh expects the jobs created in the sector to be tangible as he noted that “if someone is in employment, you can see, so it is easier to verify. When you don’t see, it does not exist.”

Furthermore, he said the government needed to show how those jobs are generated because “if we are indeed able to generate such jobs, it would endear confidence in whatever we are doing and then, within a very short period, in our development trajectory, we will be able to curb the huge unemployment levels in our economy. But for the 745,000 jobs, we need to interrogate it further and the minister needs to come out much and prove to all of us that indeed these jobs have been created.”

To highlight how the figures could possibly be skewed, Mr. Kareweh remarked that, “even within the crop sub-sector, it is only five crops that were targeted and only five crops with 200,000 farmers could generate 745,000 jobs for us?”

Per the government’s trajectory, he said the crop sector alone could generate 2 million jobs and “within two years, there will virtually be no unemployment in this country and that doesn’t appear to be so.”

Aside from this, Mr. Kareweh said the jobs created needed to be sustainable.

“If you give jobs to someone for only a short period, two days or five days, that is not the type of job we are talking about and no one can live on a five-day job that has been given to them… we need to actually move beyond just putting the figures out there and also talk about jobs people can live on.”

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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Prove 745,000 jobs claim – GAWU to Agric Ministry appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

According to the Union, despite not having faced an infestation of fall army-worms before, the new threat was brushed aside by the government.

[contextly_sidebar id=”UXXmuqNvEfmmgyPeXvUVtXrPl4qSZ0oG”]The government has on multiple occasions, announced that it has succeeded in ending the fall armyworm invasion.

In August, the Agriculture Ministry stated that farms were recovering from the outbreak while Deputy Agriculture Minister, Dr. Sagre Bambangi declared that the armyworms had been conquered.

Speaking on Eyewitness News on Thursday, the General Secretary of GAWU, Edward Kareweh, dismissed the claims that the invasion has been quelled, adding that the nonchalant response from state institutions might have contributed to the failure to end the invasion.

“The invasion is ongoing. As long as the armyworms continue to be on our soil, they’ll continue to cause destruction because each day, the armyworm must live and destroy. As to whether you consider the destruction significant or not is up to your own judgement, but the armyworm continues to destroy. I don’t think the armyworms have surrendered. The Ministry stated that they had defeated the armyworm completely which we disagreed with. I don’t think we are near the stage where we can state that armyworms are out of our environment completely,” he said.

“They might have known they did not have the full understanding of the armyworms and based on that they came to the wrong conclusion that they would defeat it completely. They might also have known the task was enormous, but said they would defeat it completely when they knew they could not. The fall armyworms are not like the normal armyworms. They have migrated from somewhere, we’ve never encountered them before. It was better to be honest that you were not sure of the outcome of the battle with a new enemy, but would make sure it’s defeated. If you look at the story all along, you get the sense that the challenges of defeating the armyworms have been downplayed to look as though we’ll walk over them. Today they’ve come to stay ”

According to Edward Kareweh, farmers are supposed to spray their farms about three times to curb an infestation of the fall army worms.

However, he believes that not enough chemicals were provided to the farmers to effectively protect their crops.

“Government did not appear to have provided the needed resources to be able to fight the armyworms. The quantities of chemicals and pesticides that were sent were not enough. Either the total chemicals available were not enough or enough was provided, but it didn’t get to the farmers.”

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By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Gov’t hasn’t defeated fall armyworms yet – GAWU appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

According to him, the program is just a “stop-gap” measure which will have short-lived benefits.

[contextly_sidebar id=”lDOyy14diH8ZhV0pkIMFoOMWzBZ8C6rw”]Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, Mr. Kareweh said the approach by government does not tackle the underlying problems within the sector.

“It takes more than we are just seeing. These measures government is taking; I’ll call them stop gap measures. They are not permanent solution measures. They are not going to take us far. But we can get results within the short-term and then we will all be happy that we have implemented policies and come with results, but these are short-term measures. We need long-term measures.”

“Do we know how much it will cost the government to import fertilizer into this country? Are we thinking about building a fertilizer factory in this country? And how long will it take us?” he quizzed.

He lamented that, the government’s plan of importing fertilizer and improved seeds for distribution to the beneficiary farmers will not help the local economy.

“The unfortunate thing is that, we are going to import seeds, we are importing fertilizer, much of the money will simply go into importing all these things when in actual fact, if they were produced in this country, certainly the multiplier effect of it will be so great. One would not say what we are doing today will not bring benefits, they will bring benefits, but they will be short-lived,” he said.

He further said the elements of the program by the NPP government was not a novelty, especially with the provision of farm inputs and subsidized cost of fertilizer, which he said successive governments have also done without achieving the desired results.

He however urged the NPP government to make considerations for long-term solutions to ensure that relevant gains are made in the agricultural sector.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @jnyabor

The post ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ short-term approach – GAWU appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Not only do the agric workers view the promise as an ambitious one, they also believe the targets are misplaced.

“If we are talking about having a mechanization structure in every district with a minimum of ten tractors that is too much an ambitious project and I don’t think that it is feasible,” General Secretary of GAWU, Edward Kareweh observed.

He added, “We could be thinking of increasing the existing number and making sure that in every region, there are not less than 10 or 15 districts with the interventions.”

President John Mahama at a presentation of the NDC’s manifesto highlights on Tuesday [September 13, 2016], outlined over a dozen initiatives to develop Ghana’s agric sector.

The promise followed concerns over the continuous decline in agric’s contribution to GDP.

The situation has been attributed to many reasons including the absence of improved mechanization and the adverse impact of the weather.

The sector’s contribution has declined from 31.8 percent in 2009 to 19 percent in 2015.

Edward Kareweh also tells Citi Business News the time period for achieving the promise is unconvincing.

“I am just not too much convinced that this could be achieved within four years.”

GAWU commends initiative on post harvest losses

Meanwhile the agric workers have lauded government intervention aimed at reducing the increasing post harvest losses faced by producers of agricultural products.

They explain the move will help stabilize the incomes of the farmers.

“We only hope that as they have promised, they will fulfill the promise since it is unfortunate when you harvest and you have to sell it off because you have low prices. It is a good thing to salvage the fisher folks from the huge losses when there is bumper harvest and also to stabilize their incomes,” Mr. Kareweh further remarked.

Minority punches holes into 1 million tonnes cocoa output target

President Mahama also indicated that an NDC government will put in place sustainable measures to push up cocoa output in the next crop season.

But the Minority Spokesperson on Agric and Cocoa Affairs in Parliament and MP for Kwadaso, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, tells Citi Business News the country does not have the financial strength to meet the high cost of increasing production levels.

According to him, current developments in Ghana’s cocoa sector will make it difficult to attain the 1 million tonnes output target outlined by President Mahama.

“To say that cocoa production is going up at this time when we know that the peak of 1 million tonnes was recorded in 2011/2012 crop season, is throwing dust into the eyes of Ghanaians.”

“There is no way that Ghana could even hit 750,000 tonnes this crop season (2015/2016) which has about just 14 days to end,” Dr. Akoto intimated.

Cocoa production levels have witnessed a decline from the over 1,000,000 tonnes in the 2010/2011 crop season to a little over 740,000 tonnes in the 2014/2015 crop season.

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By: Pius Amihere Eduku/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana

The post NDC’s all districts agric mechanization ambitious – GAWU appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.