Farmers deserve insurance - MPs

Members of Parliament (MPs) are pushing for insurance cover for farmers and workers in Ghana’s agricultural sector.

According to them, the absence of such a policy makes the sector unattractive and has, in part, accounted for its negative growth over the years.

MP for Nsawam-Adoagyiri constituency, Frank Annoh-Dompreh, believes the high risks associated with the sector, require insurance cover for them.

Speaking on the floor of the House on Thursday June 9, the lawmaker said: “Without agriculture, roads wouldn’t have been built, without agriculture hospitals, schools, good drinking water wouldn’t have been there”.

“Mr Speaker, how do you sustain agriculture moving or going forward? One area is agricultural insurance or farmers’ insurance,” Mr Annoh-Dompreh said.

“Farmers need to be insured as we insure our vehicles, farmers need to be insured as we have health insurance, farmers need to be insured because farmers constitute about 60 per cent of the population of this country.

“Mr Speaker, the problem has to do with risk in agriculture, the financial institutions are scared or afraid to provide financial support in the area of agricultural financing. It is about time we, as lawmakers, push banks like the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB), which is the farmers’ bank, if no banking institution will do it, [to provide insurance for farmers]. I think we can push [ADB] to create insurance for our numerous farmers.”

Mr Annoh-Dompreh further urged farmers to desist from partisan politics in order to benefit fully from some arrangements put in place by the government.

“Farmers’ associations should not allow politics to [lead] them; in other words, the farmers’ association should [divorce] themselves from political activities. The Ministry of [Food and] Agriculture has started something on a pilot basis, but there is the need for the ministry or for us as lawmakers to push them a little bit further so that they will speed up the process,” he said.