Tanzania: Govt to distribute 8 million insecticide packs to cotton farmers

By Nashon Kennedy

The government plans to distribute eight million bottles of insecticides to cotton farmers in the country worth over 30 billion. That was said here by the Director of Regulatory Service of the Tanzania Cotton Board (Insecticides) Mr James Shimbe when he was explaining about the preparations made by the board to distribute cotton insecticides to farmers during the event of receiving a total of 1,380,058 cotton insecticides bottles from Super Agro and Dans Star companies.

"Currently, all insecticides that we have received will be distributed to cotton farmers to deal with the cotton insecticides that destroy the growth of the crop," he explained.

He said the Board has already distributed a total of 2.9 million bottles to the eastern zone regions of Mwanza, Simiyu, Geita, Tabora, Kigoma, Kagera, Katavi, Dodoma, Singida and Tabora for killing insects that destroy the cotton growing cycle, fruits and seedlings.

"Here we are targeting the 'Jassids', insecticide which destroys a lot of cotton and these insecticides have arrived at the right time," he said.

He allayed fears to farmers whom the farmers have attacked by the victims and they should not be afraid because the government is ready to deal with them.

"For the eastern part of the region, we distributed a total of 57,000 bottles to Morogoro, Coast, Iringa, Manyara and Kilimanjaro regions. "We are continuing this exercise for the whole country and they have arrived at the right time," he said.

He praised the Agriculture Minister, Mr Hussein Bashe for doing a good job of helping on timely availability of the insecticides and distributing them to the farmers.

"This is a good exercise because it is well conducted and nothing went wrong in the field and is being distributed to farmers on time," he said.

In another incident, Mr Shimbe said the government will take legal measures against the Mwabasabi village Agricultural Marketing and Cooperative Unions(AMCOs)'s leaders in Chato district, Geita region who were found selling 104 (acre-packs) of cotton poison illegally and was detained recently in one shop in the village, caused the shop owner and those leaders to disappear.

"These leaders are doing illegal issues, they were given insecticides to distribute to farmers and instead they used them for their own personal gain," he said, adding that the board will not agree to see leaders sabotage cotton farmers by selling insecticides instead of distributing them to farmers free of charge.

Read the original article on Daily News.