Editorial: Sanitising Ghana?s Tomato Trade

The tomato trade in Ghana employs some 5000 women, most of who are bread winners in their homes and communities, and also single parents eking out a living by spending nearly a week each marketing period outside the comfort of their homes.

These are women who have chosen to work and work hard in a rather hostile environment, contributing their bit to the growth of the economy and national development.

From their marketing centres to farm gates, especially in Burkina Faso, whose economy rake in a whopping ?2bn daily in revenue from our economy, these poor women are daily at the mercy of interpreters and armed robbers on the highways between the remotest parts of Offinso through Techiman to Kintampo. Occasionally, they are also assaulted by some of the heartless farmers, for ?driving hard bargains? or protesting the poor quality of the commodity offered them at some of the farm-gates.

Between December and May, this year alone, several cases of accidents were recorded among tomato traders doing business in Burkina Faso. As always, the victims were women, and not interpreters, who are male, or the drivers and farmers, who make all the profit, dumping or no dumping. A dozen or so people died, and several others received serious injuries. One poor lady had her cash amounting to over ?32m stolen by an armed robber.

Three years ago, one trader was murdered by young farm hands over the mere haggling of prices of tomatoes on a farm gate in Derma in the Brong Ahafo Region. Two years later, another met an untimely death under similar circumstances.

Women play a huge role in the economic development of nations in our part of the world, and control as well quite a chunk of the national economy, especially the informal sector. For any group of people therefore to subject such hard working Ghanaians decently earning their livelihood to undue stress, agony and ordeal is to literally blockade the economy, especially when it is on record that these women alone pump ?2bn daily, around this time, into the economy of a neighbouring African country for the mutual development of the sub-region.

Unfortunately, however, besides the ordeal they go through on their way to the farm gates in Burkina Faso, they are confronted in their own backyard with the activities of people who do not believe in decent, hard work and the risks associated with honest labour, but would want to cheat and lie and steal for profit even when such activities seriously undermine economic growth and social cohesion.

As we do this piece, a vehicle from Burkina Faso carrying tonnes of tomatoes is on its way to Kumasi or Accra, using unapproved routes and skipping entry points where levies are paid for development of our districts, especially Bongo, Talensi-Nabdam and Kasena Nankana all in the Upper East region and depriving the nation of the much-needed resources for developmental programmes. Fully aware of the law prohibiting aliens from engaging in petty trade, these hoodlums connive with Ghanaian traders to dump huge cargoes of tomatoes onto tomato markets at places like CMB and Agbogbloshie, both in Accra and points in Kumasi, wrecking the markets for the patriotic, hard working ones operating in a regulated environment because of the perishability of the commodity and lack of preservation facilities.

The result is a glut, and the steady impoverishment of committed, dedicated women of the land engaged in decent economic activity.

Dumping is an economic crime anywhere in the world, and we would therefore call on the AMA, the KMA and our dedicated officials at the Immigration Service to investigate the matter in the effort to help arrest the perpetrators and sanitize the trade. We trust in their ability to do it, and we are confident that the institutions concerned will act and act fast.