Government must provide fire insurance for large scale farms – Kofi Dzamesi

Mr Kofi Dzamesi, Chief Executive Officer of the Bui Power Authority, is calling on the Government to support large scale farmers with an insurance package against perennial bushfires.

Wildfires during the dry periods of the country threatens farm investments, and the CEO, who owns the nation’s largest cashew plantation, said although a major challenge to large scale tree croppers, insurance policies in the country presently would not cover such losses.

Mr Dzamesi made the call when he briefed the Ghana News Agency on a fire incident on Friday, which destroyed more than 100 acres of his 1,000-acre cashew farm in the North Dayi District of the Volta Region.

He said most farmers suffered crippling losses from such fires in the absence of insurance covers, and that it was time for the Government to intervene to save the nation’s fast expanding tree crop sector.

“It is difficult to get insurance companies to insure farms. It is very difficult, and the State must come in to support large scale farms. The State should establish an insurance to insure against all these bush fires,” he said.

More than 4,000 cashew trees were destroyed in the inferno that was compounded by fast winds of the harmattan, and Mr. Dzamesi told the GNA his company, Tesyd Farms, lost over GH¢1.5 million worth of investments.

He however said destruction represented just about 10 per cent of the total investment, and that the company would work to restore the cover, and work with stakeholders including traditional authorities to address the issue of hunters who are said to be the originators of such wild infernos.

“We have to reinvest money and replant the lost areas. For us we are encouraged to continue because the future is about farming so we will not be discouraged.

“We know the chiefs are behind us. They gave us land, and so we will seek their intervention to address the issue of bush burning,” he said.

Source: GNA