Dowa District Council has procured 11 motorbicycles for its agriculture extension development officers in all the Extension Planning Areas to ease mobility challenges.
The initiative follows a concept the district learnt from Machinga district where lead farmers, clubs, cooperatives and associations are requested to pay an annual recognition fee to the council.
Speaking during the handover ceremony held at its agriculture offices in Mponela-Dowa on Wednesday, Deputy Director of Agriculture Extension Services Kenneth Chaula expressed excitement with the purchase, saying it will help improve service delivery.
“Our extension workers experience several challenges like failing to visit farmers’ households because of mobility challenges.
This particular burden on government has been lessened because of the contributions from farmers so that the extension workers can serve them better,” he said.
He said he was optimistic that the extension workers would frequently visit the farmers and advise them so that they adopt good agriculture practices to boost agricultural produce in the district.
Dowa district commissioner, Stallich Mwambiwa said they had decided to procure the motorcycles using the annual subscription contributions to ease mobility challenges.
“Our analysis shows that we are a district that is agriculture based and we thought of easing mobility challenges of our extension workers to enhance their responsiveness,” he said.
One of the district’s agriculture extension development officers, Daniel Chisale of Mponela Extension Planning Area, said the motorbicycles will help in broadening their areas to farmers.
“This will assist in increasing the coverage to our farmers, especially in hard-to-reach areas, and will help us serve the farmers in the district better,” he said.
Apart from the motorbikes, the council has also purchased bags of fertilizer, maize seed, chemicals, sprayers and other farm inputs for its mega farm project.
By Kondwani Kandiado
