The Minister of Food and Agriculture, Hon. Eric Opoku has distributed the 900 commandeered water pumping machines to the 9 selected regions in Ghana to enhance food production in Ghana.
The distribution took place at the Agriculture Engineering Services Directorate, under the Ministry of Food and Agriculture at Amrahia Daily Farm, Accra.
Speaking at the donation he said the 900 water bumps were commandeered by the anti-galamsey task force across the galamsey sites and upon court ruling, the bumps should be used to enhance food production to support the implementation of Feed Ghana Agenda, hence the distribution of the pumps to the 9 regions.
According to the Minister, the 9 regions are the region where galamsey is not located, “We selected nine regions where galamsey or illegal mining cannot be found. We want to avoid the situation where after presenting these equipment you will them on the site again for galamsey activities so we carefully selected the beneficiary regions and all the nine regions that we are presenting these items to are the regions we can say that there are no illegal mining activities.
To ensure equal distribution of water pumps he said each region is receiving 100 water pump machines and these would be distributed to the farmer cooperatives called ‘Community Commodity Based Cooperatives.
“I have asked the farmers to constitute themselves into community commodity-based cooperatives so in all the regions we have the cooperatives there. We are handling them to the regional ministers, they will work with the regional directors of agriculture to determine the cooperatives that can take advantage of these items to increase food production in their various communities”, Hon. Eric Opoku said.
To ensure safety usage of the water pumps machines by the farmers after the galamsey usage, Minister explained to Agric Today that the technical personnels have inspected the pumps and have assured of no contamination of the water pumps machines, hence they could be used
for food production.
The beneficiary regions are Northen, Upper East, Upper West, Northeast, Savanah, Greater Accra, Volta, Oti and Bono East region.
