The Member of Parliament for the Sissala East constituency, Hon. Abass Ridwan has suggested that the smuggling of fertilizer into neighboring Burkina Faso could be checked if the custom and immigration barrier in Tumu could be moved ahead from its present location, adding that, whenever the smugglers are caught, they end up by telling the police that they are transporting the subsidized fertilizer to some villages ahead of the barrier.
“If you look at the issue of fertilizer smuggling in Sissala East, we have a major challenge, wherever you go and the place is a border town, the border is always closer to the neighboring country, if you go to Tumu, the border is in the Tumu Training College and behind the border, they are people’s houses there and some villages are even far ahead of the border. So when you get people with the fertilizer at the border and you want to talk and they tell you that, they are transporting the fertilizer to those villages what can you do, but they end up sending them to Burkina Faso. I think what we have to do is to move the custom and immigration barrier from there and send it beyond the villages in Tumu” he revealed.
However, Hon. Ridwan asserted to the painful fact that, his district is part of the districts harboring the fertilizer smuggling scandal that hits the entire region, noting that they are educating farmers and opinion leaders to be vigilant in order to help fight the menace by volunteering information to the right authorities to get rid of the canker.
The MP made this revelation on Monday August 27, 2018 when he was reacting to comments on Radio Waa’s Yelkaabahe, made by the Agric Minister, Hon. Osei Afriyie Akoto that, Upper West Region is now named as the smuggling capital of Ghana of which his district was not left of the hook.
By: Saeed Fatawu.
