13 January 2004
editorial
LAST FRIDAY, this paper carried a story on its front page on the sad fate of rice farmers at the Dawhenya Irrigation farm due to their inability to pay astronomic electricity bills charged by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
According to the story, the problem also affects farmers at other irrigation farms: Kpong, Asutsuare and Weija.
The farmers' problems worsened when utility bills skyrocketed under this government in 2002. From a bill of ˘850,000 per farmer that year, farmers are now required to pay a whopping ˘4.2 million each for the electricity used to pump water through the irrigation canals.
Subsequently, because they cannot break even, talk less of making a modest profit for their efforts, the farmers have cultivated smaller acreages and as a matter of fact, some have opted out altogether. Why, they asked, should they toil all year round only to earn barely enough to pay their electricity bills?
Meanwhile, we have a government which trumpets its desire to improve the lot of our farmers. Indeed, Presidential Initiatives to improve our agricultural output have been set up with a lot of fanfare and money.
The question that agitates The Chronicle is simple: If you cannot take care of what you already have, how can you claim to take care of future things?
Our rice farmers at the various irrigation projects can only survive if they are subsidised by reducing overheads like electricity charges and the removing of the VAT on inputs.
However, The Chronicle can almost hear our politicians saying, "oh, our development partners will kick against that!" Meanwhile, we expect our rice farmers, whose produce are far more tasty and nutritious, to sell at the same price as heavily subsidised rice imported from the United States, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Chronicle will continue to insist that bold action must be taken to protect our local producers, be they farmers or manufacturers. Until we have a government that can take proactive and tough action, we will continue to spend scarce foreign exchange importing "cheap" foreign foods.
We will continue enriching foreigners whilst we impoverish ourselves. Is anybody up there listening?
Correction
In our Edidtorial of yesterday, we inadvertently gave credit to The Police Narcotic Squad instead of the National Narcotic Board for busting the expatriate drug barons and their Ghanaian cohorts last week We understand however that it was the Police Narcotic Squad that gave the armed cover during the operation. We regret the factual error
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