NO FERTILISER IN CHIPATA - MPEZENI

GOVERNMENT has not started the delivery and the distribution of fertiliser in Eastern Province and farmers are now gripped with anxieties as the rainy season is just about to commence, Paramount Chief Mpezeni has said.

But sources in the Ministry of Agriculture have attributed the delay in the delivery and distribution of fertilizer to government decision to award the contracts to what they termed as briefcase suppliers who did not have the commodity and were running around trying to buy from local and established players.

Paramount Chief Mpezeni of the Ngoni people in Eastern Province says there has not been a single bag of fertiliser that had reached any district in the region and has appealed to Minister of Agriculture Mtolo Phiri to assure farmers that the farm inputs would be delivered before the onset of the rains.

Efforts to get a comment from Mr Phiri failed as his mobile phone went answered on several occasions he was called. A text message sent was not responded to.

The traditional leader said in an interview that beneficiaries of the Farmers Input Support Programme (FISP) had not been told as how soon they would start receiving fertiliser and that once the rains begin, it would be difficult for many farmers to access the inputs.

He said with the onset of the rainy season, farmers are worried that they may not access fertiliser which would effectively affected their crop yield whose resultant effect would be hunger and increased poverty.

“We have not started receiving the fertiliser yet. We have not been told as to when it will be delivered and distributed to farmers. The beneficiaries have all registered themselves with their cooperatives but they do not know when they will receive their packs.

Soon it will start raining and we are worried that the farmers may not access the fertilizer. There is anxiety among farmers because here we depend on farming,” Paramount Chief Mpezeni said.

But sources have told the Daily Nation that the delay was as a result of Government’s decision to engage briefcase suppliers who did not have the commodity and were negotiating with established suppliers.

The sources said the country’s established suppliers had fertiliser in their warehouses and that some senior officials in the governing party had been to warehouses and had seen how much fertiliser was already in the country.

The source said the senior party officials were wondering why the Minister of Agriculture was ignoring suppliers with the commodity and finances to meet the government’s demands.

They said there was a deliberate scheme by some officials at the Ministry of Agriculture who were frustrating the procurement of fertiliser and cause panic so that President Hakainde Hichilema could be forced to declare a disaster and call for emergency procurement of the commodity.