Make bush burning a taboo – MCE

The Municipal Chief Executive of Wa Municipality, Alhaji Issahaku Tahiru Moomin has appealed to traditional authorities in the Wala traditional area to consider bush burning as a taboo in their various communities.

He said bush burning damaged trees, land fertility and crops and that its effect must be a public concern and not only for farmers alone and should be handled with seriousness to avert the menace.

He said bush burning seemed to be an annual ritual in the Northern part of Ghana during the dry season although the practice was gradually becoming a nationwide problem.

Alhaji Moomin made the appeal at the 35th farmers’ day celebration in Boli, a farming community in the Wa Municipality on the theme “Enhancing small scale agriculture towards agribusiness development”.

Farmers’ day is observed every year to acknowledge farmers who dedicate their lives to feeding and supplying the nation and contributing their quota to economic development.

He said agriculture should be taken as a business, but not a way of life to enable the government to achieve its dream of Ghana beyond aid and also to create employment for the teeming unemployed youth in the region and Ghana as a whole.

Alhaji moomin said the Wa municipality benefited from all government flagship programmes, geared towards making agriculture a business for betterment of the lives of citizens.

He said government introduced the Planting for Export and Rural Development Programme (PEP), planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ), one district one factory, one village one dam and newly launched Rearing for Food and Jobs (RFJ) to make farming attractive to the youth and women and the municipality had its first share of all these programmes.

He said the celebration of the farmers’ day would not be relevant if the bush fires burnt the yields of farms produced and destroyed the vegetation cover, and appealed to the traditional leaders chiefs to consider making bush burning a taboo to help curb the canker.

“The celebration of the farmers’ day will be irrelevant if bush fires continuously burn our yields on the farms and destroying the vegetation cover every year, so I will make a passionate appeal to our chiefs here to consider bush burning as a taboo at their various communities”.

“The government has made provision for the bumper harvest by providing storage places through the one district one ware house initiative, but if we don’t take care, all our yields will burn before they get to our various homes or the storage centers” he said.

The Wa municipal Director of Agriculture, Madam Getru Dumah Dery said the municipality had no warehouse facility and appealed to the government to consider providing a warehouse for the Municipal Agric office. Mr Abdul Rahman Hakeem, a 44-year-old maize farmer was adjudged the Wa Municipal best fsrmer.

He cultivated 150 arcres of maize, 30 acres of cashew,70 cattle, 55 goats,45 sheep and some number of fowls and guinea fowls was adjudged the municipal best farmer for the 2019 and was given a certificate, a tricycle and some farm inputs.