National Government Administrative Officers (NGAO) in Nyamira County have been trained on how to digitally register all farmers in their region to benefit from government’s subsidised fertiliser programme.
The training has enabled chiefs and their assistant to acquire skills on how to use the digital registration tablets in order to register farmers so that they can access fertiliser at subsidised prizes.
Nyamaiya Assistant County Commissioner (ACC) Tom Liech Odhiambo said they will involve the village elders and nyumba kumi officials to ensure efficiency and maximum coverage in the exercise.
“This registration will commence immediately we finish training the chiefs and assistant chiefs. By the time the exercise is officially launched by the president on 17th of this month before the planting season, it will find majority if not all farmers captured in the national farmers’ database,” said the ACC.
Mr Brian Nyamweya from the Fertiliser Subsidy Programme (FSP) said the programme is a welcome initiative that will cushion farmers against high fertiliser prizes that had made the commodity out of reach for most vulnerable farmers.
“The chiefs and assistant chiefs understand their area of administration and will be the best to ascertain that the farmers being registered are not ghost farmers and authenticate their farm sizes so that they are not exaggerated by crafty farmers,” Nyamweya elaborated.
He further clarified that the farmers are allowed to register as many pieces of farms as they have so long as the administrators in that area can authenticate ownership.
The national farmers’ database will be very handy in planning decisions on matters agriculture because they will have correct information on the number of people they are planning for.
By Deborah Bochere
