District Commissioner for Thyolo Douglas Moffat has appealed to chiefs in the district to exercise patience saying his office is working tirelessly to address their concerns regarding Affordable Inputs Program with the aim of assisting registered farmers get affordable farm inputs.
Moffat said that he is aware of the challenges people are facing in the district to acess this year’s farm inputs. .
“We are aware of the situation and as a matter of procedure and guidelines that government gave us as a responsibility; we are in touching base with the suppliers to adhere to the contract’s agreement. And it is true that in the area of Senior Chief Mphuka suppliers are not yet selling the farm inputs so the supplier was contacted and managed to liaise with Senior Chief Mphuka, and a warehouse has been identified where people will be buying farm inputs but they have not yet started. Therefore, am still reminding the supplier his obligation as concerned in the contract agreement.
“Similarly, for Senior Chief Thomas, traditional authority Mpenda and Ngomano what is causing the delay is the road. The road there is very bad, impassable I can say, so we are trying to identify a selling point at Thunga Trading Centre as an alternative way, and we will be contacting the suppliers who agreed with government to supply in these areas to be selling at Thunga now so that people should buy inputs from there,” said Moffat.
In an interview, Senior Chief Mphuka said that earlier on the government officials told them that there will be a market at Zambiri and Masekese but this has not happened.
He added that they have received a communication that people in the area will buy their inputs at Bvumbwe which is too costly as single person pays K8, 000 which he says its two costly.
He then called upon government officials to take their concerns into consideration as farmers are waiting to access inputs.
Meanwhile, Senior Chief Mphuka and Thomas of Thyolo have called upon ministry of agriculture to intervene on challenges people in their areas are facing to access the inputs.
The Affordable Input program is targetting 4. 2 million households in the country and in Thyolo 227 thousand households will benefit from the program.
.
