*Almost 60000 has been assisted with vouchers for tillage services and seeds to the value of P151 million As the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture fine-tunes its grant subsidy programmes, the flagship Lemang Dijo programme has announced plans to audit beneficiary farmers to verify that the data they submit matches the reality in their fields. Programme coordinator Oratile Monthe this week revealed to Voice Money that, in a bid to clamp down on potential misuse of state funds, all grant beneficiaries will be subject to the audit. “We are going to audit all the farms of the grant beneficiaries and we expect the process to help us determine what is happening on the ground,” Monthe said, noting that beneficiaries will be required to fill up a farm journal.
“It is just a diary which outlines all the timelines for all the farming activities. That helps us to have an idea and confirmation that indeed the farmer has ploughed and planted, but if you say you have planted and we should pay tractor owners but three weeks pass without any activity reflecting on the journal, that becomes a red flag. We start keeping any eye on you and you become a candidate for audit,” said Monthe urging farmers to comply with the guidelines of the programme.
Lemang Dijo which was rolled out during the current ploughing season is a revised arable small-scale programme that provides subsidy for tillage and pesticides for up to one hectare, delivered via an e-voucher worth P4,400. Alongside the government-supplied fertiliser, the package also includes seeds, mechanical help, threshing and shelling, extension services, and support for beehives capped at one colony. Although the programme initially targeted 50 000 farmers this season with a budget of P220 million, demand has far exceeded expectations. Among these, 93,649 are farm owners while 51,376 operate on leased land.
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