The government recently unveiled a $161m farming input scheme, covering seed, fertiliser, chemicals and livestock for communal, resettlement, smallscale and A1 farmers in Zimbabwe’s 2013-14 agricultural season.
In an interview with The Zimbabwean, tobacco farmer John Chitauro raised concerns about the alleged looting of inputs.
“A proper investigation should be carried out to ensure that those abusing the scheme are brought to book and prosecuted,” he said.
Farmers said they were not receiving enough fertiliser and chemicals for, alleging that these were being stolen by Zanu (PF) and senior army officials.
“They are reselling the free inputs and they hire farmers to farm on their behalf with the intention of splitting the profits from harvest sales,” said another farmer.
“It is the ordinary Zimbabwean farmer and citizen who is being affected by this corruption because the inputs are surfacing on the black market, being sold at extortionate rates.”
Simon Hunda, the secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Tobacco Growers’ Trust, said anomalies in the inputs scheme were not surprising.
“To start with, the army should not be playing an active role in the distribution of farming inputs. They are only likely to give them to their friends and a few well-connected farmers,” he said.
Army colonels Michael Murecherwa and Bernard Mzilikazi were implicated in the scam, but both described the allegations as baseless.
Said Murecherwa: “These are unfounded allegations. These are the comments of my detractors who are jealous of my success as a farmer. It is unfortunate that there are some people who want to tarnish my image as a senior army officer. Everything is above board. We are distributing the inputs fairly and equally. We are open for an audit.”
Mzilikazi said: “We have been having the same problems especially at this time of the year where we distribute the inputs. The same people have been complaining all along. We know there are people who want to cause confusion.”
Post published in: Agriculture
The army and police and the CO should not get any way near these government schemes. They can however participate as ordinary farmers if they are and should not identify themselves as otherwise. Those ones in the service of protecting national interests should do their work normally and not to interfere with the inputs scheme or any other schemes meant for the POVO. Majority are thieves as has been reported by observers. The bottom-line, however, is to get away FROM this habit f giving free inputs to farmer, as the minister recently said. The most civilised way is to take an agribusiness approach whereby farmers are helped by a serious and patriotic government by way of accessing soft loans [2-6% interest] and be afforded an opportunity to borrow such funds and use it for their farming operations and be expected to repay. Obviously a loan is a loan, who ever fails to repay faces the standard penalties of the banks or financiers. To equitably use the funds a method such as allowing every one to borrow, say, $ 10 000 at the lower interest rate of say 4% and for any additional loans the rate increases to, say, 10%. This will allow the poor farmer to get access to cheap finance for his/her small holding while those ones with large tracts of land will also benefit from the low interest finance and also, for their economies of scale operations, will borrow more at a higher interest rate. This is fair and will make the fund stainable and revolvable for future use. 32 rears of crying foul doest not help anyone. Culprits should be brought to book.
Take for instance the cancelling of water bills by government—someone uses water for his business and incurs $20 000; uses money generated from his business [it could be from irrigated wheat] to send his children to UK for studies. In contrast another poor man uses water for his household consumption and incurs $200 water bill/debt. The government has cancelled these debts by paying for both peoples debts. This is not fair because it’s akin to stealing from the national coffers and giving away to the super class. Meanwhile customs duties and goods prices remain heavy as government tries to get money for services. Who is paying? And who is stealing and from who?
The bottom line is that we are not achieving anything and we are not going anywhere.
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