By: Washington Tumany Watson –onewash9@gamil.com
MONROVIA-The Registrar General of the Cooperative Development Agency (CDA) Regina Sokan-Teah wants the Liberian Government and the international developmental partners to empower the local farmers across the country.
Madam Sokan-Teah said the best way to encourage local farmers to produce more food is through empowerment.
According to her the most important component of the empowerment for the local farmers is money.
According to her, they at the CDA are working collectively with the farmers who have organized themselves into cooperatives.
She said CDA is responsible to build the capacity of farmers into cooperatives and ensuring that their leadership structure is put into place before the cooperative can be certificated by the CDA.
Madam Sokan-Teah also disclosed that the CDA is responsible to train those interested to establish credit unions across the country.
A credit union is a self-help co-cooperative whose members pool their savings to provide each other with credit at a low-interest rate. To be a part of a credit union you have to share a common bond with other members.
Madam Sokan-Teah said before CDA certificates a credit union, the staff of the Cooperative Development Agency will have to train the leadership of that union on how to manage the people’s money among others.
She said there are lots of credit unions that the CDA has certificated including the Free Port, LPRC, Bear Factory, and American Embassy among others.
Madam Sokan-Teah said CDA conducts monitoring and audit of the various credit unions at the end of every year.
She also expressed gratitude to the partners for the level of cooperation and support are given to the CDA and that of the farmers in rural Liberia.
Madam Sokan-Teah said CDA filed staff need motorcycles to effectively carry out their duties stressing that the filed staff need to be movable and not to be static.
Comments are closed.