The Akufo-Addo administration appears to have moved the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) from the Ministry of Finance to the Ministry of Agriculture.
READ MORE: Don’t move COCOBOD to Agric Ministry - GAWU
COCOBOD, under the erstwhile Mahama administration, was under the supervision of the Finance Ministry.
The General Agriculture Workers Union (GAWU) has said COCOBOD should be left under the Finance Ministry owing to the numerous challenges under the Agric Ministry.
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The General Secretary of GAWU, Edward Kareweh, said COCOBOD should be restructured instead of moving it to the Agric Ministry.
“On the dispensation that we find ourselves cocoa production has been declining all these years and that is not a good story. We have been hearing of farmers complaining here and there. We need to address that. The need to restructure is much more important than just putting it under the Ministry of Agriculture,” Mr Kareweh said.
"The Ministry of Agriculture has its own challenges and I am not sure that it has been able to address all those challenges well, so why do we think that when COCOBOD is put under the Ministry of Agriculture farmers would benefit from that and when we talk of farmers which type of farmers?” he asked.
“For cocoa farmers to have the full benefit of their labour and their investment it does not matter whether the COCOBOD is under the Ministry of Agriculture or not, but we should also be careful that the bureaucracy and the type of attitude that bedevils the civil service is likely to affect COCOBOD if we take it to the Ministry of Agriculture,” he added.