Tanzania: Govt Intervenes in Namtumbo to Reassure Tobacco Farmers

Source from:  Tanzania Daily News  11/26/2013

NAMTUMBO District in Ruvuma Region, has started taking measures to prevent poor performance in tobacco production, as a result of dubious deals in creating ghost debts, which increase a burden to farmers.

In line with the above, last week some rampaging Namtumbo tobacco farmers took over offices of their cooperatives union, Songea Namtumbo Cooperative Union(SONAMCU) locking out their leaders in the process accusing them of inability to handle tobacco inputs for this season.

Speaking on different occasions last week, Namtumbo District Commissioner Abdula Lutavi and Ruvuma Regional Commissioner (RC), Saidi Mwambungu while disagreeing with the farmers action they said in order to bring malpractices to an end, they to ban tobacco cooperative unions from borrowing money from bank branches operating outside Namtumbo District.

They said what farmers complained about most was that bank officials were operating in collusion with tobacco cooperative leaders to defraud them. According to DC Lutavi the aim of taking such measures was to restore farmers' confidence, which had diminished, as a result of ghost debts, which further impacts negatively on district revenue due to poor tobacco production.

Citing the past three consecutive tobacco crop seasons, he said tobacco production had gone down from 8 million kilos to 2 million kilos and he was not sure whether the farmers would be able to get even 2 million kilos during this year's season.

He explained that tobacco buyers were playing their part because they weren't in any debt, but the only problem had to do with the collusion between the banks and cooperative unions, which had caused the farmers to lose morale in tobacco farming.

Expounding further, he said what appeared on the loan facility documents was forged data by a few dishonest people that made the banks pay Primary Cooperative Societies through the Unions a lot of money that did not tally with what had been agreed upon in farmers annual general meetings as far as the inputs estimates were concerned.

"At the end of the day, problems emerge of farmers not being paid for what they have laboured for. These problems emanate from bank loans and the farmers are made to repay what they are not supposed to," he said.

He added that the directives to ensure the cooperative unions borrowed money from Namtumbo banks only aimed at building the capacity of the municipality as far as revenue from tobacco was concerned including reinforcing a saving culture amongst farmers and addressing the problems related to the loans and their repayment.

"When we asked for this bank branch to be established here the reason was to boost tobacco farming so that buyers can pay farmers directly and in accordance with the contract and our municipality should know this, but lenders have been making every effort to ensure tobacco farming fails," said Mr Lutavi.

On his part, Ruvuma RC Mwambungu said the decision made by Namtumbo District had come at the right time, as it aimed at uplifting tobacco farming, which was the backbone of the district's economy.

He said Primary Cooperative Societies, would continue borrowing money from the banks in compliance with the regulations they had laid down and what the government was doing was to ensure the farmers realize what they deserved and not what the unscrupulous few were doing to benefit from the farmers' woes.

According to the RC, Ruvuma Region has been hosting several development meetings to discuss cooperative union debts and how to address them once and for all and the bank staff's integrity was also discussed at length due to the fact that the majority of Namtumbo's 29 basic unions' loan applications were dubious.

"We discovered that loan application forms had questionable information that was erased and the rewritten and the figures looked different from what had been decided at general meetings of the respective Primary Cooperative Societies," he said, adding: "this has to be stopped."

Recently, the government, through the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security & Cooperatives suspended the tobacco cooperatives Apex,which had been complained for overburdening tobacco farmers with debts in regions with high tobacco production. The regions include Tabora and Kahama District, Shinyanga.

Other areas, where tobacco is grown are Chunya in Mbeya and Namtumbo in Ruvuma Region. In the past, tobacco buying companies were the ones giving tobacco inputs to farmers and later on deduct money after harvest.

However, later the government decided to separate handling of inputs and farmers were allowed to source them via banks loans and enable farmers have more leverage leading to better returns But despite the government's good intention, the whole arrangement has recently been dogged by gross malpractice resulting into none farmer almost in every tobacco growing areas including Namtumbo. Enditem