More than one thousand bags of 25 kilogrammes of fertilizer meant for government’s Planting for Food and Jobs Programme, which were being loaded into an articulated truck with foreign registration number 10 JP 0752 BF, has been intercepted by the Bolgatanga Municipal Police Command, following a tip-off.
A Fire Service Officer whose house the fertilizer was kept was at large when GBC’s news team got to the scene.
According to a report by GBC’s Upper East Regional Correspondent, Samuel Ayammah, more than ten thousand bags have so far have been intercepted at the country’s borders in the region.
The articulated trucks previously intercepted were registered in Ghana but the perpetrators have adopted a new strategy by using trucks with foreign number plates to avoid suspicion.
Information gathered by GBC NEWS along the borders in the region indicate that almost every day two or three articulated trucks cross the border to neighboring Togo and Burkina Faso with the PFJ fertilizer.
These borders include Pulmakom and Kulungungu in the Pusiga district and Paga.
Also Samuel Ayammah reports that, the situation has affected farmers in the villages and towns along the borders in the region who struggle to get the fertilizer to buy at a higher cost or do not get to buy at all.
Residents in Zong-Naatenga, Widaana among other communities in the Pusiga district currently struggle to buy the fertilizer at forty-five Ghana cedis instead of thirty-seven cedis, fifty pesewas.
In an interview with GBC NEWS, an eyewitness who hinted the police over an attempt to smuggle the PFJ fertilizer in Bolgatanga-Soe, Robert Adongo, said it is common practice in the area.
The security personnel particularly those at the borders have been charged to up their game in exposing the canker.
