We refer to Joy FM’s documentary on Ghana Cocoa Sector dubbed ‘Poor Millionaires’, on Friday 5th December, 2014, and followed by the station’s 6:00am headline news of Tuesday 9th December, 2014, which attributed massive changes to the CODAPEC and HITECH programmes of Ghana Cocoa Board.

The documentary sought to misinform the public on the CODAPEC/HITECH (Free Mass Spraying and fertilizer distribution) programme being run by Ghana Cocoa Board by portraying that the airing of the documentary has brought about massive changes in the programme.

Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) wishes to explain that the publication by Joy FM is inaccurate, ill-conceived, mischievous, and full of malice.

The attempt by Joy FM to present Mrs Rita Owusu-Amankwah as a spokesperson of Ghana Cocoa Board exposes the mischief behind this documentary.

It is the view of COOCBOD that the management of Joy FM, in this 21st century will be civilized enough and go by the code of ethics of modern journalism and conduct in-depth research on issues on cocoa before publishing them.

It must be noted that since January 2014, Ghana Cocoa Board has reviewed the CODAPEC/HITECH programme and placed the distribution of the inputs directly under its staff in the various districts leading to the absence on our markets of the CODAPEC and HITECH inputs marked NOT FOR SALE, and not recently as portrayed in the documentary.

It is rather unfortunate that the documentary did not feature any of the farmers who benefitted from the supply of over 1.6 million bags of inorganic fertilizers, 220,000 bags of organic fertilizers and 1.7 million litres of foliar fertilizers distributed free to farmers across the cocoa growing regions this year.

Joy FM intentionally did not find a single farmer whose farm has benefitted from the over 1.3 million litres of insecticides, and 2.6 million sachets of fungicide applied on farmers’ farms. It is also intriguing to note that none of the over 5000 beneficiaries of COOCBOD Scholarships in 2014 was interviewed.

It is rather interesting to know that our cherished cocoa farmers are very appreciative of the unprecedented 62.74 per cent increase in the producer price of cocoa from GHc3,392.00 to GHC 5,520.00 per tonne and a bonus of GHC 5.00 per bag of 64kg.

Ghana Cocoa Board with the support of Government remains focused on its goals of enhancing the livelihood of our farmers and their communities. Improvements in community schools and cocoa roads and the provision of health facilities for the betterment of farmers are also on course.

Finally, we wish to remind those behind this one-sided, ill-conceived, mischievous, and malicious documentary by Joy FM that we live in a civilised society and expect them to behave as such.