AfricaPress-Tanzania: ZANZIBAR Presidential candidate on the ACT-Wazalendo party ticket, Maalim Seif Sharif Hamad, who is on the election campaign trail in Pemba Island promised farmers that his reign would bring to them raised yields and better prices if elected to the office.
Talking to farmers cultivating seaweeds, cloves, spices, vegetables, and keeps poultry, in separate areas of North and South Pemba, who have been getting unstable prices, low production, and unreliable market he told them that his victory would improve production, and find them a reliable market abroad.
Seaweed farmers in the Island have been battered by ongoing low imports as a result of Covid-19 pandemic, even before its global eruption.
In its trade, they complained about low price(s) that compelled the government to establish for them a seaweed processing factory in Pemba as a way of raising quality and locally providing them with a ready market.
“I will support you….just vote me to become the next president of Zanzibar,” Hamad told the residents, adding that once in office, he will introduce free market opportunity for them to sell their produce anywhere.
The presidential hopeful also pledged to the farmers that his reign will reduce high taxes imposed on them, and also introduce a system, where their produce will be locally and outside the country marketed with ease. To herders and poultry keepers, Mr Hamad assured them that his reign will improve their animals’ health and production, saying: “We want to minimize importation of products from abroad.”
Commenting, a poultry farmer in Mtambile-South Pemba, Mr Humud Muhammed Saidi told Mr Hamad that costs of feeding and purchasing drugs for the livestock has been high, adding: “We need government’s support to improve our activities.”
On his part, a local fisherman, Mr Masoud Abdallah Mwinyi asked the ACT-Wazalendo presidential candidate to provide them with modern fishing boats, saying: “If you are elected the president, we need modern fishing boats. The locally made fish boats are now dangerous, especially in rough, strong wind and waves…this year alone, we lost six colleagues, who drowned and eaten by fish in dangerous boats.”
