The nation's cocoa sector is currently facing one of its greatest dangers ever as illicit gold miners keep attacking cocoa plantations, including those that have just undergone rehabilitation thanks to a national initiative.
If the unlawful operations are not stopped, the business might face calamity, the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has warned.
Rev. Edwin Afari, Executive Director of Cocoa Health and Extension Services, raised the alarm by stating that unlawful mining (Ramsey) operations posed a serious danger to COCOBOD's GH4.8 billion National Cocoa Restoration Project.
"Recently, I visited the Boinso region in the Western Region's Aowin municipality, and they had completely cleared all of the approximately 36.5 hectares that we worked.
On the sidelines of a ceremony to honor 15 visually challenged cocoa farmers from the Central, Western, and Brong Ahafo cocoa areas for their significant contributions to cocoa production, he told media in Cape Coast on Friday.
He claimed that over the past ten years, the situation had gotten worse and worse. As a result, he appealed to the Minerals Commission to stop granting mining concessions to miners in cocoa-growing areas and urged all stakeholders to work to lessen the detrimental effects of galamsey on the nation's cocoa production.
According to Fr. Afari, illicit mining operations were disturbing in the Wassa Akropong corridor and other areas of the Ashanti Region, as well as Manso Adubia, Antoakrom, and Anyinam in the Eastern South cocoa region's Western South.
program for rehabilitation
Toorder to restore productivity to farms devastated by the Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus Disease (CSSVD), President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo launched the National Cocoa Restoration Plan at Sefwi Wiawso in the Western North Region on September 24, 2020.
The initiative, which had previously been successfully implemented in some of the areas of cocoa production that had been most severely impacted by the CSSVD, has subsequently been expanded to all other cocoa-producing districts.
The two-year rehabilitation procedure, which includes removing the diseased trees, treating the farms, and replanting with disease-tolerant, early-bearing, high-yielding cocoa types, is entirely covered by COCOBOD under the initiative.
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