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A day’s interface meeting on the outcome of Community Scorecard conducted on Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJs) has been organised in Yendi for all stakeholders.

It was organised by the Northern Ghana Governance Activity (NGGA) project, SEND GHANA and its partner Action on Voluntary Child Aid and funded by USAID for officials of Department of Agriculture, Yendi Municipal Assembly, Farmers, National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) Traditional Authorities, Information Services Department (ISD) Media among others.

The objectives of the interface included; the one year implementation of PFJs, to generate evidence from the ground that would be used for engagement with district, regional, and national level stakeholders to improve service delivery.

Mr Joseph Edwin Yelkabong, Regional Project Officer of Northern Ghana Governance Activity (NGGA) indicated that they conducted a survey on the 2017 planting for Food and Jobs in Kpalkpeni-Doli, Kpalgugbeni and Gbengbaliga communities in the Yendi Municipality.

He said they collaborated with the Ministry Of Food And Agriculture on the scorecard on PFJs exercise within the three communities and stated that throughout their rounds, they were able to generate some information on the programme where they had successful implementation and some shortcomings.

He said the interface meeting was for them to compare the scorecard of MOFA and the communities in order to find out the weaker scores and seek improvement.

Mr Abubakari Shani, Focal Person for SEND GHANA said the main aim of the interface meeting was to find out the outcome of the community Scorecard conducted in the three communities on PFJs and the Agricultural Department Unit in Yendi Municipality.

Mr Abubakari said the exercise was based on indicators for assessing Planting for Food and Jobs initiative, which included; accessibility and availability of service, transparency and accountability, equity, extension services, benefits of PFJs.

He said in 2017 646 farmers registered for Planting for Food and Jobs.

In rating the quality of seed supplied farmers scored that it was good except the rice variety that was not good enough but brand of maize and soyabeans should be maintained.

They also urged government maintain the pricing policy of the fertilizer and involve many more banks in the payment system.

They also called on Government to post more of Nation Builders’ Corps to MOFA to increase the number of Agricultural Extension Officers, to introduce livestock in the PFJs programme and tractor services should be established at Area Councils level to serve farmers.

“Gender parity allocation be considered for future and early publicity should be carried out by I.S.D and NCCE so that farmers can adequately prepare for the package.

“Government should also allow MOFA to register farmers without involving politicians as most farmers declined to do so because of the involvement of politicians.