A total of 2,170 National Service Personnel have been deployed to serve under the government’s ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ program which begins this year.
According to the acting Executive Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS), Ussif Mustapha, the newly introduced avenue for National service is to promote President Akufo-Addo’s vision of transforming the agricultural sector in the country.
Government is expected roll out the program in all 216 districts of the country and will involve the supply of farm resources such as high yielding and improved seedlings to participating farmers. The farmers will also get agrochemicals such as fertilizer at reduced prices.
According to the government the program will create some 750,000 jobs and would motivate farmers to grow staple foods such as maize, millet, and beans.
Meanwhile even before the deployed personnel commence work on September 1, the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana have expressed skepticism about the ability of the NSS personnel to do a good job and has said their engagement for extension services as part of the ‘Planting for Food and Job’ program will make the program unsuccessful.
The Programme Officer for the Association, Charles Kwowe Nyaaba, said “The approach of recruiting extension service personnel to help in the programme is wrong. If you go to the Ministry of Agriculture at the district level, you have the extension officers there who are not able to visit farming communities because of lack of logistics. You leave all these people hanging there and you say you are bringing National Service personnel to train them to go and train the farmers.†He spoke to Citi News
He added that he will not be surprised to see the personnel going to learn from the farmers and not the other way round.
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