Allen points out bad moves in Moko fight

The Chairperson of this country’s Fair Trade Organisation, Philemon Allen has expressed his dissatisfaction with the manner in which technocrats dealt with the Moko disease that has caused some farmers to loose their income.{{more}}

Allen, who was addressing a press conference on Tuesday, said the Moko disease has placed economic and ecological constraints on this country, which have deprived farmers of production and farm lands for the next 18 months, without any return of income.

“We believe that the administration, the implementation and the eradication programme was faulted,” Allen stressed. He added that he did not think that all the bananas that were destroyed had Moko

Giving his perspective on the handling of the disease, Allen claimed that from the beginning of the eradication, it seemed more efficient to get rid of the disease by using herbicides.

According to Allen, despite the protocol that had been established to deal with the disease, sometimes it was not followed by the operators, since some of them were moving from infected farm areas to non-infected areas, hence causing more contamination. He also highlighted the fact that some operators were not properly attired and did not test some of the plants before destroying them.

“Some of the farms that were suffering from stress, water, nutrition, and chemical were adjudged as Moko and were put out, some were aided and abetted by the people who do the operation for the compensation fund,” he continued.

He however stated that from their independent testing, they found that some of the plants that were adjudged as having Moko did not have any signs of the disease.

“These are some of the flaws that happened in the operation and no one can safely say that this whole process was handled properly,” Allen said.

Despite the many of flaws that occurred during that period, both Allen and the Co-coordinator of WINFA Renrick Rose, congratulated the Ministry of Agriculture for their steps in trying to deal with the disease despite their dissatisfaction with how the operators handled it.

Reading from a joint statement from WINFA and the Fair Trade Organisation, Rose told the media that since the passage of Hurricane Dean, WINFA has been working to find ways in which they can assist their 10-12% of farmers who were affected, including non-banana farmers.

According to him, their major concern is the livelihood of the farmers who have lost income during the recovery period, to support female farmers who have their families to raise and restore production levels as soon as possible, while ensuring that Fair Trade, EUREPGAP, TNC and other market standards are maintained.

Already they have been in touch with international organizations and other Fair Trade small producer organizations for joint advocacy to ensure that their market space is not lost permanently as a result of storm damage.