Africa-Press – Tanzania. RULING party CCM Secretary General Daniel Chongolo has directed regional and district commissioners in regions growing maize to camp at market centres to oversee and monitor the whole process to ensure fairness to farmers.
Mr Chongolo issued the directives here when addressing Ruvuma regional leaders and CCM members in the region.
He said the RCs and DCs have the responsibility to protect interests of farmers by ensuring there is fairness when sell their produce to the National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) as directed by President Samia Suluhu Hassan.
“Regional and District Commissioners have the responsibility of taking care of farmers in their jurisdictions (RCs and DCs). They should go and camp at the auction centres to ensure there is fairness,” he emphasized.
Mr Chongolo said the leaders were also entitled to make a follow-up and make sure the government money allocated for purchasing maize is really spent on buying maize from farmers within the country.
He said the leaders’ failure to camp at the centres to monitor the whole process of purchasing maize from farmers would create loopholes, enabling middlemen to steal farmers rights and benefit from government money instead of farmers.
He stressed on the need for the leaders to intervene by camping at the centres, noting that it was not acceptable to let the conmen benefit from the money provided by government to purchase farmers’ maize.
The ruling Party CS issued the directives following various reports by members of the CCM National Secretariet over farmers complaints on NFRA, mainly regarding bureaucracy in purchasing the maize from farmers.
Mr Chongolo together with other members of Secretariat visited the region to inspect the implementation of the Party’s manifesto 2020-2025.
Speaking separately in one of the maize buying centres in Mbinga Town, the farmers condemned the NRFA for refusing to take some maize from farmers on ground that the produce were of poor grade, thus creating loophole for middlemen to benefit from the government money.
Boniface Ngundi, one of the farmers in Mbinga, said business people were camping at the centres waiting for farmers whose maize were not purchased by NFRA.
“These people (business people) camp at centres waiting for farmers taking back their maize so that they could buy them at low prices of between 200-250/- per kilogramme and later selling the same maize to NFRA for 500/- per kilogramme,” he said.
Another farmer, Mr Lucas Nchagwa, said the farmers were happy after the government allocated additional 50bn/- to purchase, but the problem of bureaucracy in selling their produce to NRFA remains a challenge.
