Ouagadougou: Following denunciations, the judicial police arrested 18 people including 10 agents of the Ministry of Agriculture and 8 traders, in a case of diversion of fertilizers intended for producers in the region of East.
The regional head of the Eastern judicial police, Zakaria Traoré, during a press briefing explained that 723 bags worth more than 21 million FCFA were seized, after investigation and following cases of denunciations of the sale of fertilizer subsidized by the State at the large market of Fada N’Gourma in particular.
According to the police officer, the embezzlers’ modus operandi consists of collecting identity cards from ordinary people which will be used like those of producers requesting fertilizer. Other actors and accomplices then make it possible to extract agricultural inputs and then sell them at a higher price on the market.
This arrest was made possible thanks to the control system put in place by the Ministry of Agriculture, recalled the general director of plant production
, Prosper Zemba.
‘After our diagnosis, we set up a monitoring system, with a toll-free number which made it possible to collect a certain amount of information which we brought to the judicial authorities in Fada,’ he said.
The Burkinabe government is engaged in an agro-pastoral offensive to enable the country to achieve food self-sufficiency as quickly as possible and strengthen the population’s resilience in the face of terrorist attacks.
Source: Burkina Information Agency