Agric minister plays with figures, he does not state specific figures – PRO
Agric Minister has been lying about Ghana’s food production levels – Braimah
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture has refuted suggestions by Sulemana Braimah that it has consistently given Ghanaians wrong information on Ghana's food production levels.
Speaking in a Neat FM interview monitored by GhanaWeb, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) for the ministry, Barbara Tanko, said that the ministry has not been giving wrong figures but the issue might be that people confuse the figures the ministry puts out.
“As a ministry, we have two sets of data’s on is the national trend in production and the other is Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ)contribution to the national trend … but at times people do conflict these two figures.
“When we say the PFJ’s contribution to maize contribution is 855 metric tonnes, someone may confuse it to be the national production figure,” she explained.
Also, Tanko said that the sector minister, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has not been deliberately misinforming the public but he sometimes makes mistakes because he is human.
“… the minister is not specific to a particular figure, he speaks there about, about a quarter of a million, quadruple, triple that and that is where the interpretation comes in. The minister is human, all the figures cannot be in his mind for him to specifically mention them, but he plays around the figure… and it is permissible,” he added.
He further stated that the policies of the government have contributed immensely to the development of the agriculture sector, particularly in rural communities.
Meanwhile, the Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa, Sulemana Braimah, has bemoaned the rate at which the Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has been giving wrong information about Ghana’s food production levels.
According to him, the minister, by this action is giving Ghanaians a false indication that the country is food secure which is not the best.
Braimah further stated that even though some of the policies of the government have helped raise the food production level of the country, its benefits are being outweighed by the high level of misinformation.
“One of the ministries in this country that has been chinning out very wrong and false information has been the Ministry of Agriculture… the minister himself has always been putting out false information, he is always being exposed for the wrong information that is put out there but it appears that it does not deter him and that is why we are where we are,” he said.
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Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto