The government through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture has distributed 900 water pumping machines, confiscated from galamseyers to nine regions across the country.
The water pumping machines are to be handed over to farmer cooperatives in the nine regions for onward distribution to farmers. The move aims at increasing food production and supporting the implementation of the government’s Feed Ghana Programme.
According to the minister for Food and Agriculture Eric Opoku each beneficiary region will receive 100 machines.
These include the Upper East, Upper West, North East, Savannah, Northern, Greater Accra, Volta, Oti and Bono East.
Court order
The sector Minister, Eric Opoku, at a handing over ceremony at Amrahia explained the machines were confiscated by the task force and a court subsequently ordered for them to be handed over to the MOFA to enhance food production in the country.
He explained that the beneficiary regions were carefully selected because galamsey activities could not be found there.
‘’We wanted to prevent a situation where, after presenting this equipment to them, you would find them back on the site engaged in galamsey activities.
Therefore, we carefully selected the beneficiary regions.
All the regions to which we are providing these machines are areas where we have observed no illegal mining taking place’’, he explained.
Mr Opoku stated that the equipment had been inspected by MOFA technical personnel, who found them suitable for use on the farms.
Speaking on behalf of the beneficiary regions, the Northern Regional Minister, John Ali Adolf, gave the assurance that the machines would be used for their intended purposes and would never be returned to any galamsey site.
He said that as regional ministers, they would periodically monitor to see whether the machines were being used.
‘’We wouldn’t want anyone for any reason to ever attempt galamsey activities in our regions.
Those machines will be used to help farmers in their farms so that they can water the crops across the seasons, especially during the dry season,” he explained
