Olam honours cocoa purchasing clerks

Takoradi, Sept. 10, GNA - Four hundred cocoa purchasing clerks of OLAM Ghana Limited, a licensed cocoa buying company, were on Tuesday honoured for their outstanding services to the company at a colourful ceremony at Takoradi.

The award winners, who were drawn from the various cocoa producing areas of the country, were presented with items valued at more than 600 million cedis.

Mr George Asher of the Goaso Cocoa District in the Brong Ahafo Region, who was adjudged the overall best purchasing clerk, was presented with a cash prize of 26 million cedis. In addition, he would spend a week's holiday at the company's headquarters in Singapore.

Other prizes included refrigerators, potable power generators, corn mill grounders, motor bicycles, cocoa spraying machines, bicycles and stereo sound systems.

Mr Joseph Boahen Aidoo, Western Regional Minister, reminded cocoa purchasing clerks that "there is always self-fulfilment in hard work and righteous service".

However, those who think otherwise and resort to vices such as cheating and stealing of bonuses of unsuspecting farmers or adjusting weighing scales should know that their "ill-gotten wealth and glory would be short-lived".

He commended the company for instituting the award scheme and said it was natural that every good work be appreciated and recognised, adding that if one's hard work goes unnoticed, one becomes demoralised.

Mr Aidoo recalled the company's donation of 200 million cedis towards an anti cocoa smuggling fund in 2002 and urged other companies to emulate them.

Mr Aidoo affirmed the government's commitment to the well-being of cocoa farmers, saying it would continue to pay realistic producer prices for the commodity, undertake mass spraying exercises and pay bonuses. Mr M. D. Ramesh, Managing Director of OLAM Ghana Limited, said with the support of workers, especially the purchasing clerks, the company continued to make giant strides in the cocoa purchasing industry. He said the company purchased 51,000 tonnes of cocoa in the past cocoa season making it one of the leading licensed buying companies in the country.

More than one billion cedis had been paid to Olam farmers as bonus to ensure that the farmers lived comfortably during the cocoa off-season and provided social amenities such as school blocks and clinics for some of the communities in which it operated.

Mr Ramesh said the company would spend 500 million cedis to boost the construction of model farm project it had started. In an address read for Dr Kwame Addo Kufuor, Minister of Defence, he called for a concerted effort by stakeholders to check cocoa smuggling along the county's borders.

He said cocoa-purchasing clerks owed it a duty to educate farmers on the effects of smuggling on the national economy and warned that, those found to be condoning with smugglers would be severely dealt with.