The government has warned unscrupulous individuals who cheat farmers across the country in the process of distributing agricultural subsidies including seeds, pesticides and fertilizers.
Deputy Minister for agriculture, food security and cooperatives, Mr Adam Malima
The Deputy Minister for agriculture, food security and cooperatives, Mr Adam Malima, said that it is not part of government procedure to short change farmers as reports suggest that there are individuals given the responsibility to give subsidies to farmers but do not.
He was responding to a supplementary question from Special Seats Member of Parliament Pindi Chana who said that hundreds of individuals given responsibility to give farmers subsidies were going around the country collecting their signatures.
They also pay them money to hoodwink them into accepting that they had received the inputs yet they were not getting them.
“We have reports that they go around farmers’ homes, pay them and get their signatures to disguise to the government that they have indeed distributed the subsidies yet they are just selling them at exorbitant prices elsewhere.
This is a multi-billion racket,” she said. Earlier, she had said that women were facing various challenges including lack of access to loans and agriculture subsidies in the form of inputs and thus wanted to know how the government would reach them.
Mr Malima said that through District Agriculture Development Programmes, groups of people including women and youths have been able to access loans for agriculture inputs through the Agricultural Input Trust Fund (AGITF) worth 24.3bn/-.
He said they have also been able to get loans from Tanzania Investment Bank worth 14.2bn/- through the agriculture window. He said that a total of seven million farmers have also benefitted through farm subsidies.
Source Tanzania Daily News
