By DORCAS CHAABA –

CHILANGA District Agricultural Coordinator Isaac Chilinda has advised farmers in the district to take the registration exercise seriously so that they benefit from the 2016/2017 Electronic–Voucher (e-Voucher) System.
Mr Chilinda said farmers stand to lose out if they do not register and this may threaten food security in the area.
He said it was sad that some cooperatives had not yet submitted Comprehensive farmer registers despite receiving communication that the e-Voucher system had been rolled out to the district.
Mr Chilinda was speaking recently during a district coordinating committee meeting.
Out of the 72 cooperatives in the district, only 49 had submitted the registers and that this showed a lack of commitment and concern to Government programmes by some cooperatives.
About 12,485 farmers in the district are expected to benefit from the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) in the 2016/2017 farming season.
The e-Voucher system under FISP was launched last year in Mbabala,  Choma District by President Edgar Lungu, as a pilot programme in 13 selected districts.
The e-Voucher system is meant to help farmers move away from depending on rain-fed agriculture and mono-cropping to other farm ventures in order to improve agricultural productivity.
The objective of the e-Voucher system is to enable farmers have access to subsidised inputs in a timely way by encouraging them to diversify because they will have access to a wide range of inputs to pick from.
Government had decided to extend the e-voucher system under FISP to Chilanga in this year’s farming season because of the positive response received from farmers where the system had been piloted.
“It is a requirement for cooperatives who wish to benefit from FISP for the 2016/2017 farming season, to submit a detailed and comprehensive list of farmers in their cooperatives as prescribed in the format availed to them,” he said.
But Mr Chilinda said it was disheartening that even the cooperatives that had managed to submit the registers were calling stating that there were errors especially on the National Registration Cards
(NCRs) of some farmers.
“The department will not be held accountable if some farmers are left out because there must be a sense of responsibility from the
leadership of the cooperatives,” he said.-NAIS