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Reports reaching The Chronicle from the Paga border has established that a Ghanaian-registered tomato truck carrying cargo worth GH�36,000 has been impounded in Ziniare, in the Oubritenga Province north of Ouagadougou, in a ritual tomato buyer fraud incident, which occurred over two weeks ago. The truck, still at a police base in Ziniare at the time of going to press, was loaded with the smelly, rotten cargo, weeks after the seizure of the truck, official sources in Ouagadougou indicated. Tomato trucks being impounded in Ouagadougou is an embarrassing, but recurring feature of the tomato trade, which still runs on a crude, un-sanitised turf, infested with swindling and intransigent buyer-transporter cabals. The driver has been identified as John Boateng, a member of the Ashanti Tomato Cargo Drivers Union in Kumasi, and the buyer, Ama Pomaa, who plies her trade as a fringe buyer at the Cocoa Marketing Board (CMB) Market in Accra. Pomaa is not registered under the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI) tomato buyers quota scheme. Her non-membership of the Ghana National Tomato Traders and Transporters Association GNTTTA provides an excuse for her and her ilk the unfettered license to freewheel as a buyer on the turf in Burkina Faso, even though the MoTI arrangement, as a state directive, is intended at fair play, transparency, and fair practices for all buyers in Ghana. According to The Chronicle�s sources, Ama picked the truck, which is registered AW 4604 -14, at the Anloga Junction in Kumasi, on a contract to ferry the lean season vegetable to the CMB Market in Accra from a farm gate in Burkina Faso, on December 14, 2014. Our sources revealed that after she had made some part payment for fuel, she decided to return to Accra on reaching Paga, complaining she was ill and could not continue the journey. It later turned out that she had been truly hospitalised at a private health facility in Accra, according to tomato truck union sources. An intermediary/interpreter therefore continued the journey with the truck driver from Paga into Burkina Faso, until they reached Ziniare, where they got almost a truck load, and intended to move further up-country to top up. It was when the tomato producers on the irrigation site asked for payment for the cargo that they realised the truck driver and intermediary/interpreter could be playing tricks. They did not have cash to pay and had also not negotiated for credit. Another source told The Chronicle that all along the route to Paga, and then onto the highways leading to farm gates in Burkina Faso, the driver had been querying the body language of Ama and the intermediary/interpreter, and, even, after Ama�s return to Accra, tried to find from the intermediary if the cash he was seeing in the truck could buy a full load. However, each time he probed, the intermediary told him everything was �under control,� reliable sources revealed. The angry Burkinabe producers, according to sources at Paga, rallied the support of other farmers on the site to assist in compelling the buyer pay for the vegetable. Interestingly, it was during that pandemonium that another producer cooperative identified Ama�s team as having already bought some cargo on credit sometime ago on another irrigation site and absconded. The angry farmers then invited the police, who immediately impounded the cargo and began independent investigations. The driver and Ama�s intermediary were then driven to the Ziniare police post. Sensing danger, the intermediary fled, leaving behind the driver, the truck, and cargo of tomatoes at the Ziniare police station. Desperate and marooned, the driver, with scant cash left on him, made a beehive to Accra to report to executives of the tomato transport union in Kumasi. The GNTTTA, the nation�s official tomato suppliers, distributors and importers, has confirmed the incident, but said, much as credit buying is part of any transaction, the Association, according to its General Secretary, Madam Lydia Afoley Anum, cannot intervene, since Ama is one of the buyers who has decided not to be bound by conventions and practices on the market, as well as state directives and policies guiding the trade in tomatoes in Ghana. �The trade in tomato between Ghana and Burkina Faso is not a lawless child game. It is guided by policies prevailing in both countries. Between the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Ghana (MoTI), and the Ghana Embassy in Ouagadougou, and then the Ministry of Food and Water Resources in Ouagadougou; we have our own arrangements for the trade, in line with bilateral arrangements and international standards�,� Madam Anum argued. �This is not about monopolies or artificial shortages, it about the law and a state directive that criminal-minded people are simply violating to have advantage over others.� According to her, she received the information by phone from a Burkinabe interpreter personally known to her. �Ordinarily, she and the Ghana Embassy would have intervened and had the farmers sorted out after the release of the cargo from the police post to its final destination and sold under the watch of the Association�that is, if Ama Pomaa were a member of the Association and genuinely challenged financially.� In this particular instance, however, she lamented that �Ama is one of the recalcitrant elements who have been giving the trade a bad name and violating the arrangements for the trade endorsed for all buyer individuals and groups by the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI).� Additionally,� she moaned, �people like Ama on the CMB Market in Accra, and their unruly partner truck drivers, have gained notoriety in Burkina Faso for all sorts of embarrassing activities. Such unruly behaviours, she insisted, have not only led to road carnage and farm gate violence, but also a dwindling in the fortunes of regular buyers. �We must understand that tomato is a perishable crop which must be regulated on the market, and ensure that we bring in just what the market can take.� The Chronicle gathered that in the last five years, buyers have been facing glut situations in the markets in the various regions, particularly Accra. The local government authorities are even reported to be aware of drains along the CMB Market stretch being perennially degraded by rotten tomato with its attendant health hazards. According to the GNTTTA General Secretary, markets in Ghana generally do not have facilities to preserve fresh, perishable commodities coming from farm gates, and she believes people like Ama should, therefore, be guided by the wisdom in the MoTI quota scheme that endorses regulation in the number trucks moving into farm gates, and the quantity of vegetable coming onto markets. �If for nothing at all,� she fumed, �the MoTI arrangement ensures that at the end of each season, we can have data on tomato import to support research, planning and policy.� Senior members of the GNTTTA Transport Wing in Kumasi, led by the Chairman of the GNTTTA, Eric Osei Tuffuor, who graciously moved into Burkina Faso to attempt an intervention, were told that unless the last cent is paid, the truck would not be released � �not today, not tomorrow.� Chronicle files reveal that swindling tactics on the part of buyers of perishable commodities is an intriguing character of the informal economy turf, not only at regional integration level, but on farm gates in Ghana. The Burkina Faso Embassy in Accra, having been inundated by such other complaints, particularly from the onion front in Ghana, has advised producers back home to engage buyers only on a contract basis. Togo and Benin are in their books as decent buyers � not Ghana. ECOWAS has beautiful regional integration protocols that should enhance cross border trade by integrating economies and resources for creating wealth and employment opportunities. Implementation of these protocols and harmonisation of policies in the respective member countries tend to suffer implementation challenges. Under the decentralisation laws of Ghana, local government authorities are mandated to link the ground to the top in monitoring and implementation effectively national policies and programmes, and which is why they have desks for health and environment, as well as trade, agriculture etc. Unfortunately, in this instance, this vital link is missing, in spite of the contribution of the sector to national development, and the fact that nine out of every 10 workers in Ghana belong to the informal economy. Whilst the politicians and experts agree that massive potential exists in the informal economy for transforming the national economy, the debate has raged on only on �per diem� platforms � where some consultants and technocrats live off the state by aping and miming stale facts and figures at seminars and workshops, without coming down to drop the gavel on the Ananses in the informal economy. In neighbouring Burkina Faso, agriculture is the heartbeat of the economy, not only in word, but in deed. The majority of players in agriculture here ply their trade on state-zoned irrigation facilities, and even though they may belong to the so-called informal economy, they and their operations are captured name and face on systems across the country, making implementation and monitoring of policies or activities of actors, for that matter, less challenging.