Include assembly's oil palm in PSI-DCE

Daboase (w/r), Aug. 6, GNA - Mr Edward Tawiah Amprofi, District Chief Executive for the Mpohor Wassa East District on Saturday appealed to the Minister of Trade, Industries and President's Special Initiative (PSI) to integrate the assembly's oil palm nursery into the main PSI programme.

He said the project started in August 2005 with the Subri Industrial Plantation Limited (SIPL) being offered 20 per cent in equity shareholding, while the assembly maintained 80 per cent. Mr Amprofi made the appeal at a press briefing at Daboase on Saturday. He said the assembly had so far spent 400 million cedis from its Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF) on the nursery and procured a 700 million cedis irrigation sprinkler equipment for the watering of the seedlings. Mr Amprofi said the assembly realising that several beneficiaries had failed to repay PAF loans, decided to embark on the oil palm project and to sell the high yielding seedlings to farmers for planting. He said though Norpalm, Ayiem Oil Mill and WOAP nursery sites were all engaged in oil-palm projects under the PSI, their outputs were inadequate.

He said the workers salaries alone were almost 20 million cedis on the average and this had to be sourced from the assembly's common fund. The DCE explained that this had compelled the assembly to suspend over 60 per cent of the assemblies capital projects and other programmes in the district.

"Now instead of supplying the seedlings to the farmers on credit as pertains in the PSI, farmers were being asked to deposit 20 per cent of the cost of the seedling and to bear the cost of transportation in addition" he explained.

The farmers had so far ordered over 3000 out of the total of 47,500 seedlings, noted the DCE.

Mr Amprofi noted that, some of the farmers had decided to patronise the PSI oil palm seedlings instead of that of the assembly due to its better conditions.

Mr Isaac Adjei-Yeboah, Project Manager said present oil-palm nursery was likely to increase its output to 120,000 seedlings by next year. He said the three hectares land, had its own water source, a dam and sprinkler to make watering easier in both rainy and dry seasons.