Beneficiaries of ADRA loans default payment

Some farmers at Akim Oda who benefited from the Adventist Development Relief Agency (ADRA) credit facilities, totaling one billion cedis to expand their farms over the past two years have not paid back.

Mr Agya Asamoah-Muno, Senior Project Officer of ADRA who said this at the close of a five-day training workshop on "nutrition, health and sanitation", appealed to the beneficiaries to pay back the loans for the programme to be sustained.

About 65 participants drawn from the Birim South, West Akim and Suhum/Kraboa/Coaltar Districts attended the workshop, aimed at equipping them with skills on nutrition, health and sanitation.

Mr Asamoah-Muno said it had been observed that farmers sold the best of their produce and ate the rotten ones. ADRA has, therefore, developed a way to educate them on the need to eat nutritious food.

A Planning Officer of the Birim South District Assembly, Mr Isaac Oware-Aboagye, said the assembly had disbursed over 200 million cedis credit facilities to women in the area and called on others to apply through the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs.

He said loan recovery was becoming a problem and suggested that farmers should be given inputs to expand their farms instead of giving them physical cash.