Abandoned Ejura Farms Rotting Away

The Ejura Farms Ghana Limited located in the Ejura-Sekyedumasi district of the Ashanti Region, is still rotting away, as successive governments come and go without any attempt to revive it.

The current deteriorating condition of the farms, again brings to the fore, concerns about Ghana’s poor maintenance culture of its assets.

Photos of the onetime important state asset sighted by The Anchor show all the buildings and equipment abandoned in very rusty state: Rooms, roofs, windows, variety of machines and others are all fallen into a state beyond repair.

The Maize Farm, under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, was created in 1969 by the Kwame Nkrumah government, with the objective of producing maize on a large-scale to feed the nation.

The farms also reared animals including cattle.

The farms, hitherto, served as a very important state asset, have been left under the mercy of the weather without any strategic measures to bring it back to life.

Unfortunately, 53 years on, the farms which could have helped reduce the importation of maize today, is currently left in sorry state, begging for both government and investor attention.

Building infrastructure housing its equipment and officials as well as animals, have all been left to deteriorate to a shocking level where a strategic stepcould be to revamp it.

It comes in the wake of reports of similar abandonments of the Buipe Tomato and the Komenda Sugar Factories.

The photos which are trending online show an obvious desertion of otherwise a profitable asset at chagrin of the weather.

In 2011, about 35 former workers of Ejura Farms who were laid off in 2008 appealed to the government, to compensate them to enable them access income generating ventures to enhance their living standards.

Nana Yaw Opoku, a former workshop superintendent at the farms, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Ejura that the government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) laid them off in 2008, with the explanation that new equipment and machines were being acquired.

He said the workers expected some compensation from the government but that didn’t work, though some government officials had earlier told them before the redundancy that they would be given some sort of compensation.

Nana Opoku laments that though they had since petitioned the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) for advice, they are yet to receive any response from the Commission.

He appealed to the government to study the records pertaining to their redundancy and offer them the necessary compensation, so that, they could undertake some economic activities.

Nana Opoku said the farms offered job opportunities for a number of the youth in the area and appealed to the District Chief Executive, Madam Martha Bruckner, to liaise with the government to revamp the project.

Again in October 2018, the National Service Secretariat said, it was aiming to cultivate 5, 000 acres of farmland at its Ejura farms to boost production.

This according to the NSS, was part of efforts by the government to create jobs for the people of Ejura, initiate developmental agenda there and reduce import rate in the country.

The Secretariat had already worked on over 400 acres which the Executive Director, Mustapha Ussif praised as a success compared to previous years.

On working visit to the farm on October 5, Mustapha Ussif, who is now the Minister of Youth and Sports and Member of Parliament (MP) Yagaba-Kubori Constituency, expressed excitement on the progress made on the farms, describing the “seasons as bumper harvest”.

He said the Scheme has strategically been supporting government’s Flagship program “Planting for Food and Jobs”.

Source: theanchorghana