Aveyime Rice Project wasting away

The US$22 million rice cultivation project by the Quality Grain Company remains untapped six years after the NPP administration investigated the state sponsored investment of the project and promised to restore it to productivity.

However the assurances from the Kufuor administration that the large tracts of land and equipment would be put to use are yet to materialize.

An accra-based radio station's - JOY FM - journalist visited the project site at Aveyime in the North Tongu area of the Volta Region at the weekend and reported that the only working unit of the project; the mill, produced some four hundred bags of rice daily which was a far cry from the 1,200 bags it could produce in one hour.

The Quality Grain Project took off some ten years ago to execute large scale rice farming and milling and was to bring jobs and income to inhabitants in the over 25 communities living on the fringes of the Lower Volta River.

But it got stalled with the arrest and subsequent prosecution and imprisonment of some former ministers in the National Democratic Congress government charged with causing financial loss to the state.

According to Bismark, plant and equipment at the main site of the Project had since been abandoned with large tracts of land also left to fallow.

He said only a skeletal staff was still at post as security officers or working at the rice processing mill that churned out different grades of rice for the local market.

The Manager of the site, Joshua Tsaxe, took him to a large warehouse where heavy duty equipment and machinery for the project were kept.

Fifty heavy duty water pumping machines, three power generators, spare parts, ten-metre-wide multi purpose planting machines, heavy duty trucks and two Ford pick-up vehicles were all packed at the warehouse.

The Site Manager said one of three Nissan Patrol vehicles that were taken out of the warehouse was currently in use by the Adidome District Assembly.

He however questioned the efficiency of the decaying equipment when the project finally came back to life.

“From the warehouse, we moved to the rice mill where workers were busily processing paddy rice bought from the Irrigation Development Authority’s stakeholder farmers in the area.”

And according to Mr. Tsaxe, the mill processed over ten tonnes of rice every hour; accounting for over four hundred bags of rice a day and generating some 200 million cedis in the three-months-a-year season.

He said revenue from the operations of the mill was used to maintain the plant and pay salaries.

The rice mill according to Mr. Tsaxe, was world class equipment and a valuable resource comparable to any in the world that ought to be saved from going waste.

The land area meant for rice cultivation was over grown with bushes. Large numbers of pipes were packed on the banks of the lower Volta River still waiting to be laid to carry water to the main land.

But in the peak of the harmattan season, the plastic pipes stood a high risk of being burnt by bush fires while the metal ones were already rusting away under the vagaries of the weather.

Three government officials under the NDC regime served various jail terms for acts of omission thought to have constituted financial loss to the State while the US-based investor at the centre of the project, Juliet Cotton was also incarcerated in her home country for her criminal role in the establishment of the project.