By Golok Nanmwa, Jos
In compliance with Governor Caleb Manasseh Mutfwang’s people oriented agenda and desire to shield local farmers from excessive exploitations by third party forces, normally known as the middle men, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Commodity Marketing and food Security, Hon. Ezekiel Davou on Thursday led a team of Plateau Commodity Marketing Company, (PLACOM) staff and critical stakeholders in the agrarian sector on a statewide physical stocktaking and evaluation of the direct procurement from farmers Pilot exercise which kick-started 25th November 2024, in designated local governments of the State.
It would be recalled that His Excellency, Barrister Caleb Manasseh Mutfwang had launched the Plateau Commodity marketing company PLACOM at Eliel Center, on the 12th of September 2024, with a clear mandate on the company to off-take commodities directly from farmers at very decent rates, in order to ameliorate for their farming cost and all other unforseen extra expenses they incurred during the farming period.
This is to encourage them to produce more farm products while cutting down duress selling which puts the local farmers at serious lost.
It is worthy of note that at various stakeholders engagements, His Excellency, Barrister Caleb Manasseh Mutfwang reiterated that the comprehensive data of the farmers would be generated in the process of direct procurement, as it would be utilized for fertiliser subsidy disbursements for all the farmers who sell commodities directly to PLACOM.
As a sign of great commitment and devotion to serving the people, His Excellency ensured the swift mobilization of adequate takeoff resources to PLACOM for the procurements and the renovation of some few existing PADP warehouses cut across the state to serve as storage facilities for all procured grains and allied commodities.
It is in line with this development that the Special Adviser and his monitoring team embarked on the State wide pilot evaluation exercise to ensure that procurements were duly made to specifications and instructions, and adequately stored at temporal storages before transferred to the warehouses after renovations are over, this is to ensure fair average quality (FAQ) test assurance.
The team observed reasonable compliance from farmers, noted all the challenges, and are determined to ensure more efficacy in the next phase so as to actualize the vision of the company.
Our correspondent reports that Local governments visited were Kanam, Wase, lantang South, Lantang North, Quannpan, Shendam, Mangu, Bokkos, and Bassa.
The direct procurement exercise will resume on December 16th, 2024, covering the entire State, farmers are encouraged to patronise PLACOM, as they stand the chance of enjoying better rates and good subsidy packages during farming season.
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