Shortages Of Imported Food Annoy Ghanaians

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30880, 13 October 1965, Page 14

Shortages Of Imported Food Annoy Ghanaians

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter) ACCRA. Temporary shortages of essential foodstuffs from abroad occur with irritating frequency in Ghana. The supply of locallygrown produce is continually threatened by bad distribution.

When ,Dr. Kwame Nkrumah opened the present Parliament he said there was a momentary scarcity of vegetables and fruit in certain urban areas which was causing high prices, and considerable hardship. As long ago as July 7 he called, for an emergency programme of distribution, involving the armed forces. He also set up a special committee. * The missing commodities from overseas may be tea, coffee, sugar, evaporated milk, baby foods or somethin® else in popular demand. There are queues ’and bad temper among housewives, European or AFrican, and more explosive anger among the earthy market mammies jostling each other, babies on backs, at the wholesale depots. When a consignment arrives there is a rush, and hoarding by people who would never do it in normal circumstances.

Dr. Nkrumah says agricultural production has fallen behind national requirements. On trips up country one can see plantains, yams, cassava, maize, bananas and coconuts growing in abundance, some of them like weeds.

The problem is getting the produce to the centres of population. There may be no lorry available at a reasonable price. There may be no road through the bush between the farm and the main highway. There may be no storage facilities whatever. The farmer sees his harvest rot and watches the pests at work. Meanwhile the cities go short. Unscrupulous middlemen somehow find transport, buy at the lowest price in the villages and sell at the highest in the towns. Black marketing flourishes. Discontent becomes general and people may go hungry in the midst of plenty. A fine large pineapple costing only 8d in the villages is sold for 3s in Accra. Essential commodities from abroad like evaporated or powdered milk, sugar, rice and flour are imported'solely by the state-owned Ghana National Trading Corporation. The “Evening News” alleges that 60 per cent of it goes to the stores of several “foreign capitalist” firms who hoard it instead of releasing it. Chicken and Wine European and American housewives shopping in Accra, mostly in multi-stores, always find a seemingly inexhaustible supply of deep-frozen American Maryland chickens and red and white wines from Hungary and Bulgaria. Less expensive things which have gladdened the hearts of women recently have been New Zealand lamb, Australian butter (after a month of margarine—or nothing), Brazilian corned beef, Danish steaks and finally English cheeses and Swiss chocolate. The butter and corned beef went fast. African housewives and market mammies descended upon them Jike locusts. Strong brown arms reached out for as much as they could carry. There is now once more a shortage of both. , ' Corned beef h>S becoihe part of Ghana’s staple diet like sardines and various kinds of homogenised milk prepared in Britain or Denmark. Thera ia always a run on

famous bedtime drinks that come from England. For people without a supply of cows’ or goats’ milk the canned evaporated varieties are the only alternative. Women Subdued

African women besieging a store for one brand of milk food and other “finds” strug- , gjed so much with the police khat >the latter eventually started laying about them with *the leather thongs of their batons.

Angry women are not appeased when those who can read discover that the shortage is caused because 10 sheds at Tema harbour are filled te •Capacity with huge quantities of imported foodstuffs which have waited two months to be cleared.

There are many organisations involved in food—the Farmers’ Council, cooperatives, state farms, an agricultural section to the Workers’ Brigade, a Food Marketing Board and the over-all Ministry of Food and Nutrition and Ministry of Agriculture. Recently the Government

established a £lm Ghana Grocers’ Corporation which will organise a chain of stores throughout the country. The new Minister of Agriculture, (Mr Jantuah) has the unenviable job of having to report on the situation. “But the people and their stomachs,” said the “Ghanaian Times” when he was given the task, “have not the time and patience to wait for an inquiry. They want food.”