Following the Coronavitus outbreak the Ministry of Ariculture has suspended all agricultural crops stakeholders meetings planned for March and April this year until further notice.
In addition all agricultural crops boards and institutions thereof to continue with their preparations of various guidelines to be used for 2020/2021 season.
The directives were given yesterday in Dodoma by Minister for Agriculture Japhet Hasunga who added the government will not involve itself in setting prices for farmers crops starting 2019/20 season and instead all cooperative societies in collaboration with farmers and other stakeholders should set the prices taking into consideration obtaining prices in local and foreign markets.
He added that due to the Coronavirus disease all auctions that will be conducted by Agricultural Marketing Cooperatives Societies (AMCOS) in regard to cashew nuts, tobacco, coffee, sisal, cotton and others there should not be huge gatherings of people and those in attendance should be spaced at 2 metres to minimise congestion.
He said the ministry’s institutions – the National Food Reserves Agency (NFRA) and AMCOS for purchase of nontraditional crops should start crop buying preparations for the 2019/2020 season.
In regard to summary for audit on cooperatives conducted from July to December last year he said a total of 3,160 cooperatives were audited, out of which 35 were secondary, 1,882 were Amcos, SACCOS 91,059 and 184 others.
He said the audit conducted on 4,413 cooperatives, 69 received satisfactory certificates, 1,545 doubtful certificates, 330 received unsatisfactory certificates and 1,216 received poor certificates.
Hasunga directed the cooperative development commission to provide cooperative training to all cooperative societies in the country as well as on how to administer them.
He said the training is to include societies’ records financial and bookkeeping and special audit within one month to all 16 secondary cooperatives that received unsatisfactory or poor certificates.
He also directed the Commission for Cooperative Development to within three months finalize guidelines and regulations on how to get qualified, educated and experienced leaders.
Likewise Hasunga instructed all secondary cooperatives to employ qualified managers who are professional in the job.
Meanwhile, minister Hasunga called on cooperative commission staff to change so as to build up a strong cooperative movement to instill trust in the wananchi, and shun negligence, embezzlement and corruption.
He said reports continue to show the situation in the cooperatives is deteriorating against people’s expectations, and added that the above mentioned vices contributed to many failures.
Other contributing factors included weak control systems in income and debts collection, little understanding by members in holding their leaders to account and in general poor administration at all levels of the cooperatives.
In another development, Hasunga announced the cancellation of 3,436 cooperative societies with effect from April 17th this year due to poor management.
He also asked the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) to conduct special audit on cashew nuts cooperatives for the 2018/19 season.
The minister said this step follows the report issued by the Cooperative Audit and Supervision Corporation (COASCO) showing some of the cooperatives do not exist in areas they from where they registered and whose leaders are not known.
He said in the COASCO report for the period July to December last year showed the total number of live cooperatives was 3,160 out of 6,463 but also there were 1,250 idle cooperatives whose verification should be finalized to find out why they are idle.
He further said due to the huge number of the cooperatives and their importance for the development of citizens, they expect to review the Cooperative and COASCO laws so as to effect amendments to empower the National audit Office to start auditing all cooperatives in the country.
