COCOBOD has dismissed a Joy News investigative report which uncovered massive diversion of agro-chemicals meant for government’s free mass cocoa spraying exercise. But JOY News says it stands by the story.

The insecticides and pesticides are smuggled and sold to agro-chemical sellers who in turn sell the agro-chemicals to the poor farmers.

COCOBOD in a rejoinder claimed the report by Joy News was untrue.

“...since January 2014,  Ghana Cocoa Board has reviewed the CODAPEC/HITECH programme and placed the distribution of the inputs directly under its staff in the various districts leading to the absence on our markets of the CODAPEC and HITECH inputs marked  NOT FOR SALE, and not recently as portrayed in the documentary,” it said.

But checks by JOY News revealed otherwise. Our reporter who visited communities in the Jomoro District was able to buy 3000 cedis worth of Rodomil and Confidor all of which had NOT FOR SALE boldly printed on them. According to the sellers, some distributors divert and sell the chemicals at exorbitant prices to them. One of the sellers at the Elubo 18 market said, “Ridomil [smuggled chemical] is expensive. What government supplied us was not enough so the ones that are smuggled and sold to us are what we have available.”

Farmers in Elubo and surrounding communities in the Western Region say many of them are forced to buy the inputs from the black market because the products do not reach them.

Beneficiaries of the programme also pay for the free mass spraying service which is meant to be free of charge for all farmers.

Chairman of the Jomoro Cocoa Farmers Association, Paul Kudjoe, also told JOY News that the situation is so dire that farmers are forced to either purchase fake agro-chemicals or go onto the black market to purchase the genuine ones.

“When you see some in the store, it’s either fake or connection,” he said.

The COCOBOD rejoinder also claims JOY News failed to speak to any of the farmers who benefited from the supply of over 1.6 million bags of inorganic fertilizers, 220,000 bags of organic fertilizers and 1.7million litres of foliar fertilizers distributed free to farmers this year. Well, these were the very people JOY New spoke to.

“It’s difficult to get these free fertilizers. We are all Ghanaians. We begged for hours but were never given. We asked that they come to survey at least one person’s farm but that never happened,” a cocoa farmer in the Jomoro District tells his story about how government’s free fertilizers are not reaching some of them.

Also in its statement COCOBOD said “improvements in community schools and cocoa roads and the provision of health facilities for farmers are also on course.”

Well, these much-avowed improvements must be sped up because due the lack of hospitals in these cocoa growing communities and the poor nature of roads to these places many farmers still carry their pregnant wives on planks of wood to clinics miles away. This is evident in many communities including Ahamakromuah in the Wassa East District of the Western Region.

“Whenever someone is sick, we have to carry him on a makeshift stretcher to Ekutuase, about three miles away, especially the pregnant women,” a farmer told Joy News.

JOY News on several occasions through a letter and physical visits to COCOBOD tried to get the view of the agency on the issues prior to publication. But COCOBOD declined comment. Calls to the CEO Dr Stephen Opuni were never answered and text messages not responded-to. Just this week, JOY News alerted COCOBOD to the issues and the concerns by the farmers but the Public Affairs Director in a telephone conversation claimed this was a “sensitive issue” and that JOY FM should instead send a copy of the report to COCOBOD for the agency to effect arrests.

JOY News believes in giving voice to the voiceless and drawing attention to the plight of the underprivileged in society.