Oloteng, (UW/R), March 5, GNA – Some cashew farmers at Oloteng in the Wa West District have expressed worry over the rampant bushfires in the area, which according to them posed a serious threat to their farming activities.
They said most people at the community, including; the youth were engaged in cashew farming, but that some unscrupulous people in the area had developed the habit of burning the bush indiscriminately.
Mr Kunlier Darvin, the Chief of the community, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that cashew farming was yielding results and helping to improve the livelihoods of the people.
He therefore called on the appropriate authorities to come to their aid by putting in place measures to help curb the menace of bush burning.
Mr Darvin also proposed the establishment of environmental by-laws to punish any person or group of persons engaging in bush burning in the area to serve as deterrent to others.
“These days the rain is not reliable, so we are now farming tree crops. But bushfire is really worrying us. If you check in this community almost everybody has a cashew farm, but some people always burn the bush and sometimes our cashew also get burnt.
“So I want the Assembly Member to help me enact by-laws so that anyone who will be caught burning the bush will be punished according to the law”, the chief explained.
He also called on the Wa West District Agricultural Directorate to provide farmers at the Oloteng community with extension services, particularly on cashew farming.
“We heard there are some chemicals that you can use to spray your cashew plant and it will fruit well, and others too are there, which you can use to spray the weeds, but we don’t know them.
“So I am begging that the agricultural workers will come and teach us how to farm cashew so that we can get a lot of yields from our farms”, Mr Darvin added.
He also noted that access to tractor services and farm inputs such as fertilizers and chemicals for their farms were also scarce commodities for their farming activities.
Meanwhile, Mr Seidu Kasim, the Assembly Member for the area told the GNA that he would raise the issue of by-laws at the Assembly sitting to see how the Assembly could facilitate the establishment of such by-laws.
He said setting by-laws at the community level without the approval of the Assembly would be immaterial in punishing anyone who fell short of those by-laws hence the need for the Assembly to be involved in the process.
GNA