The National President of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG), Mr Mohammed Adam Nashiru has rubuked government for paying lip service on creating jobs for the teaming unemployed youth in the country.

He said government must prove its seriousness by revamping all defunct factories in the Upper East Region to provide jobs for the people especially the youth.

He mentioned some of the defunct factories as the rice mills which has now been turned into a timber market and the Meat factory which has been closed down for about two and half decades.

Mr Nashiru made the call in his address on the State of Agriculture in Ghana during a stakeholders meeting jointly organised by Action Aid Ghana, the Indigenous Knowledge and Organisational Development (CIKODE), and the PFAG in Bolgatanga to solicit views and inputs of farmers about the passage of the plant breeders bill.

Mr Nashiru also mentioned the Ghana Cotton Company and the Pwalugu Tomato factories as some of the industries left to rot when thousands of youth were roaming without jobs.

The National President of PFAG described these industries as white elephants and emphasised the need for government to stop paying lip services and refurbish them.

According to the President of the Association, almost 90 per cent of people in the Upper East Region were farmers and explained that if the factories were revamped, they would engage some of the people and help improve livelihoods as well as curb migration by the youth from the region.

The closure of these factories have led to high spate of rural urban migration and reversed the region which used to be the Agriculture hub of the country backward. Government needs to take urgent measures to address the problem, Mr Nashiru stressed.

He urged other advocacy groups to assist the PFAG demand better agriculture policies and reject policies that would be detrimental to farmers interests and Ghanaians in general.

Professor David Millar, a former Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University for Development Studies (UDS) admonished farmers to rely on the indigenous farming practices instead of adopting the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (MGOs).

He stated that through the creation of Small Water Systems, farmers could be supported to go into dry season farming using indigenous seeds and indigenous farming practices, stressing that research had proven that farmers through these practices could crop about three times in the dry season citing groundnuts as a convenient crop to produce.

Mr John Akaribo, Regional President of PFAG stressed on the need for government to give critical consideration to the GMOs bill before passing it into law.

The farmers expressed worry about some of their colleagues in the region committing suicide as result of their inability to service bank loans while others sell their properties to service loans all because of poor yields and the lack of market for their produce.

GNA