P/Cs advised to record purchases into passbooks

Anum Apapam (E/R), Nov 11, GNA - Purchasing Clerks (P/Cs) of licensed cocoa buying companies in the country, have been called upon to record all purchases in the farmers passbooks, for bonus and for the purposes of their children's scholarship.

Mr Daniel Ohene, a prominent cocoa farmer at "Ebenezer", a cocoa growing community near Anum Apapam in the Suhum-Kraboa-Coaltar District, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Akim Oda, where he visited one of his farms, that it had been the practice of most of the clerks to record purchases of cocoa beans on sheets of paper.

"As a result of some of the clerks' refusal to record purchases of all beans into passbooks, they keep on cheating us and this makes us to believe that there are no proper checks or supervisions by the various companies' District Officers (D/Os) over their respective P/Cs," he explained. Mr Ohene explained further that when the government declared bonuses for the 2008/2009 main crop season, most of the P/Cs locked their societies (sheds) or opened them early in the morning and stayed away only to lock the societies in the evenings, without being seen to disburse the bonus. He pointed out that he and his clerks at Anum Apapam Transroyal Company, one Mr Ntiri had deliberately refused to pay his first and second (top-up) tranch of his money to him, adding, almost all farmers who did business with Mr Ntiri marched to his house, but his wife told them that he had travelled and had not been seen since.

According Mr Ohene, those needed scholarships to their children, were also denied, because there were no records in their passbooks to attest to the fact that they were farmers who sell their beans to COCOBOD. He expressed shock that the government through COCOBOD was "throwing monies into the pockets of those who did not sell or own cocoa farms," without proper supervision. He called on the COCOBOD to do everything possible to consider the plight of cocoa farmers, by motivating them and improving their living conditions.