Agriculture minister appreciates AIP progress

The Minister of Agriculture, Sam Dalitso Kawale went for an official visit for the past days monitoring the progress of Affordable Input Program (AIP).

According to Kawale, on December 3, 2022, he visited central region districts like; Mponela, Ntchisi Boma, Malomo, Kasungu Boma, Chinkhoma, Santhe, Kamwendo, Mchinji boma, and Mkanda where he observed some of the things concerning AIP.

“Most of the centers have only NPK fertilizer and some have NPK and urea. More fertilizer was coming or being offloaded and the remaining centers will receive this week, most places have a good system of selling fertilizer”, said Kawale.

“Each day is dedicated to a village so that people come to buy on the day they are allocated which will help people, especially women, not to spend a night at a selling point” Kawale continued.

In addition to that, Kawale said, Vendors are still moving around, trying to take advantage of the process, some of the problems at selling points are deliberately caused by some people who want to take advantage of the chaos.

Some community leaders are forcing villagers to give them part of their fertilizer and threaten them of consequences if they don’t.

Following the observations the minister had, he made some ways of how the AIP initiative can move forward.

“The Ministry has increased number of vehicles to deliver fertilizer across the county, which will help delivering fertilizer to all SFFRFM and ADMARC depots, as well as mobile vending, recruited more clerks to speed up the redemption across the country who will start working soon in ADMARC depots”, said Kawale.

Kawale also said mobile vending has started in some places and also E – Government is also on board to assist.

However, Kawale gave recommendations to all chiefs and village leaders on what they should be doing to make sure AIP is working accordingly.

“Sales should be done per village/club per day, and not everyone coming any day, this is the best way of serving people and it avoids people sleeping at a selling point and also record everyone selling fertilizer to vendors to be removed from AIP next year since they don’t need fertilizer” Kawale said.

President Lazarus Chakwera launched the Agriculture Input Program (AIP) on November 19, 2022 in Dedza.