FARMERS DEMAND K14M
….ZNFU gives FRA 10 days to settle debt owed to farmers
‘‘This issue is now becoming a chronic disease but I want to warn FRA that they are not going to have it easy this year.’’
- Mr Zimba
WE are giving the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) a 10-day ultimatum to pay over K14 million they owe farmers from last year, failure to which we will clash with them, the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) has warned.
Speaking to the Daily Nation yesterday, ZNFU president Jervis Zimba demanded that FRA pay farmers within 10-days or start preparing to import maize from other countries as no farmer will supply a single grain to them in the coming marketing season.
“FRA has been selling the same maize it got on credit through community sales in their sheds. They are selling to the same poor farmers they are owing. Apart from that, they are giving cheap maize to the millers through the tripartite agreement.
“They are also supplying the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU), and in all these transactions, they are making money but why can’t they pay the K14 million they owe farmers? What kind of mediocrity is this? FRA is literally swindling farmers,” he said.
Mr. Zimba said while FRA invoices clearly indicated that farmers were to be paid two weeks after supplying their produce, the agency had failed to pay since last year.
“Farmers are still owed over K 4 million for the maize they supplied to the FRA last year. This issue is now becoming a chronic disease but I want to warn FRA that they are not going to have it easy this year.
“What farmers are owed must be paid in the next 10 days, with an assurance that in the coming marketing season, they will get their money within two weeks - failure to which we will go flat out and tell the farmers not to release maize to FRA. We have had enough of this nonsense,” Mr. Zimba said.
He said the FRA had no excuse over the payment to farmers because it had been selling the same maize it was getting on credit from the farmers to millers through the tripartite agreement, supplying DMMU and selling the subsidized maize to the community through its sheds dotted across the country.
And Mr. Zimba says it is retrogressive that it always takes the intervention of President Edgar Lungu before farmers are paid by FRA yet there are people at the ministries of Finance and Agriculture drawing salaries and allowances.
“What makes us sad is that every time, it takes the President to intervene before the farmers are paid. What is the role of the Ministry of Finance? What are people at the Ministry of Agriculture doing? FRA has been a sham. They are abrogating their own payment conditions and we have had enough from them,” he said.