Probe e-voucher sabotage ploy - SAFADA

GOVERNMENT must institute investigations to ascertain reports that some Non-Governmental Organisations are planning to sabotage the e-voucher system and disrupt the agriculture sector, Small Scale Farmers Development Agency (SAFADA) has advised.

SAFADA Executive Director Boyd Moombye also appealed to the Indaba Agriculture Policy Research Institute (IAPRI) to expose the NGOs in question to help with the investigations. Mr Moombye said President Edgar Lungu and Minister of Agriculture Michael Katambo should take the matter seriously because many farmers would be affected. Small-scale farmers, Mr Moombye said, should not be entangled into politics, saying the revelations by IAPRI should be acted upon urgently. “Government should respond to IAPRI’s warning about dangers looming in the agriculture with intelligence and professionalism to mitigate all challenges. The Minister of Agriculture and IAPRI should convene an intermediate agricultural meeting to address the matter immediately, Mr Moombye said. He said President Lungu should take keen interest in the matter and respond to IAPRI’s report swiftly. Mr Moombye advised government to instruct all Small scale farmers not to pay the K400 for the 2019/2020 far mining season until the matter was addressed because some unscrupulous individuals wanted to frustrate the system. Mr Moombye’s remarks come in the wake of tips by a source within IAPRI that foreign-funded NGOs, in collusion with a named opposition political party, were scheming to sabotage the agriculture sector to limit the PF’s chances of winning the 2021 elections. The said the plan was to push Government into succumbing to distributing inputs using the e-voucher system despite financial constraints so that farmers do not get their inputs on time as a way to incite them against government. This, the source said, is contrary to what the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) had proposed. The union had urged Government to revert to direct distribution of the inputs for this season and to dismantle arrears owed to agro dealers. The source urged President Edgar Lungu not to allow the organisations to carry out their plans as they were determined to see him hounded out of power.