MOFA promotes weighing scales for agricultural products

Tamale, Feb.02, GNA - The Northern Regional Directorate of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) has embarked on a sensitisation programme for market women on the use of weighing scales to ensure equity and fairness in the buying and selling of agricultural products. This is also to help promote the sale of agricultural products particularly non-traditional exports, between Ghana and neighbouring countries, which use weighing scales.

Mr Paul Afriyie, Officer in charge of calibration and verification at the Ghana Standards Board announced this at a day's sensitisation workshop on: "Creating awareness on the standardisation of agricultural commodities for business."

Action Aid Ghana sponsored the workshop.

Mr Afriyie said Ghana was one of the few countries in West Africa, which had not been selling by weight and standard measure and stressed the need for the country to join her neighbours to facilitate trade among them.

He said: "The programme is to introduce weighing scales at the markets to ensure that there is no longer cheating and losses at the market. By weighing, we pay for the commodity by mass and not by volume."

Mr Afriyie said the use of scales would minimise disputes among traders and buyers, adding: "Time used in bargaining will be reduced and the country will also be more critical on the quantity of goods exported or imported."

He appealed to traders to cooperate to make the exercise successful to help bring sanity in trading activities.

Miss Christina Amarchey, Senior Programme Officer of Action Aid Ghana in charge of food security said her organisation was supporting the programme to ensure that people had value for their money. She said Action Aid was also interested in poverty reduction and was optimistic that when agriculture was improved upon and the use of scales promoted, foodstuffs would be cheaper and the living conditions of the poor and the marginalized would improve.