28 Aug 2015

The acting permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Dr Pharaoh Mosupi says a robust approach has been developed to create jobs and improve the livelihoods of Batswana.

A press statement from the public relations officer in the Ministry of Agriculture in the Central District, Mr Felix Mothatego says Dr Mosupi was addressing heads of departments from the Central and North East districts in Palapye.

Dr Mosupi said cabinet has set up a committee comprising of staff from ministries of agriculture, local government and rural development, defence, justice and security, education and skills development and health.

He said the committee has already come up with modalities to ensure agricultural projects were hiring unemployed Batswana to produce for the market. Dr Mosupi said some of the ministries house institutions that buy produce to feed people “and the food has been coming from all over the world.”

The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development has about 755 primary schools with an annual budget of P380 million for food. On the other hand, the Ministry of Education and Skills Development spends P185 million on food for 207 junior secondary schools and 32 senior secondary schools.

“Therefore government now wants to use this money to purchase food from local farmers, and by so doing creating jobs,” Dr Mosupi said. Dr Mosupi further said there were guidelines compeling government institutions to procure where they were located and to go out of their locality once the product was unavailable.

He said bringing in more people into agricultural activities was expected to eliminate unemployment, adding that unemployment was expensive for the government because when people idle they end up engaging in social ills.

Dr Mosupi said critical activities have been developed for all government institutions that were to take part in the project, and that the Ministry of Agriculture has picked up those that were related to what the ministry does.

He said the idea was to link production entities with demand from schools, hospitals and prisons, adding that at the district level the ministry would create an inventory of existing structures to be used as marketing points such as horticultural markets, slaughter facilities and dairy structures.

“Farmers would be clustered around these facilities to use them to market, and this would also allow monitoring quality of produce,” he said.

Dr Mosupi said where there were no facilities farmers would be encouraged to market produce as a cluster to avoid unnecessary competition.

He further said customised contract would be developed for people in areas with no market facilities to produce for designated markets with contractual agreement. At national level, he said, the other objective was to identify import substitution, noting that farmers would be sensitised to register with the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board and be assisted in the application process to participate in tenders.

Dr Mosupi said another area of importance was to train farmers on food handling and hygiene as well as producing quality testing in collaboration with Ministry of Health “The time has come to create a graveyard for excuses and challenges because today we are talking progress and implantation,” he said. Ends