The
Zambian Minister for Agriculture and Livestock, Bob Sichinga said that the Zambian Government has
suspended the implementation of the e-voucher system that was supposed to be
used for small-scale farmers in accessing subsidised inputs under the Farmer
Inputs Support Programme (FISP) due to inadequate logistics, NaijaAgroNet reports.
Bob
Sichinga said the e-voucher which is an electronic system was set to be piloted
in 10 districts this year and needed proper preparations by the Government and
private suppliers before being implemented.
NaijaAgroNet noted that the government announced last year that it
would use the electronic system for distribution of part of the subsidised
inputs under the FISP as a pilot programme to replace the current scheme which
benefits 900,000 small-scale farmers.
Sichinga
explained during the launch of the ZNFU Lima scheme in Kabwe that about 241,000
out of the 900,000 under the FISP were expected to be covered by the electronic
system before rolling out the programme to the whole country as the e-voucher
system requires that private agro business houses have electronic register of
the 241,000 farmers as well as electronic voucher, while farmers needed to have
either a phone or a computer.
The
scheme according to Minister Agriculture and Livestock required the Ministry of
Agriculture to create a redemption fund which would be recovered by the private
suppliers once the farmers acquired the inputs in their respective districts.
“I have a computer background and when I
looked at what had been prepared, I was not satisfied that we had a register of
the 241,000 farmers; I was not satisfied that each of the targeted districts
had telephone communication to send messages. I was also not satisfied that
there was sufficient capacity to reach all the 241,000 farmers and because of
this, it was not possible to implement the e-voucher system because even the
ministry did not even have computers,” Sichinga said.
He,
however, assured that his ministry was keen to implement the electronic system
once all the necessary logistics and training had been done for all
stakeholders including the private suppliers.
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