400,000 farmers to leave e-voucher - Minister

ABOUT 400,000 farmers who were on the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) will be reverted to the conventional system after 8jxchallenges with the E voucher programme, Agriculture Minister, Michael Katambo has announced.

Meanwhile, Mr Katambo announced that farmers could now deposit their K400 counterpart funding for the 2018/2019 farming season effective yesterday. Mr Katambo who was speaking at a media briefing in Lusaka yesterday, could, however, not disclose the affected districts as assessments to ascertain the most affected areas were still ongoing.

He explained that government would procure fertiliser and assorted seed varieties for the 40 per cent affected farmers while the rest 600,000 would continue accessing inputs through the Evoucher system.

"In view of the many challenges that were faced by the ministry and in an effort to address the many reported challenges, approximately 40 percent of the (one million) farmers will be reverted to conventional FISP.

"This means the ministry will procure fertilizer and assorted seed varieties for issuing to farmers in the selected districts," he said.

He said, however, that the affected districts would gradually be re-programmed into the Evoucher system.

He further said that for the remaining districts under the E-voucher system, the cardless redeeming application and the biometric system would still be used to help ease the problems of card and pin losses.

Mr Katambo noted that with this measure, the government would protect household and national food security. He identified the challenges farmers faced in the 2017/2018 farming season as network and competence limitations in the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) as well as farmers losing their cards and pins.

Other challenges were delays in card loading, complications in deposit capture as well as limited number of members of staff to attend to farmers.

Mr Katambo announced that farmers can now commence depositing their K400 counterpart funding for the 2018/2019 farming season.

"Effective June 1 up to August 30 farmers can deposit their contribution to the FISP exercise as we want to provide the funding in time to have a better farming season next year,’’ he said