Chitipa chief wants Admarc to buy more maize
Traditional Authority Mwabulambya of Chitipa has asked government to give Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc) enough money to buy enough maize from farmers in the district.
Speaking on Tuesday when President Peter Mutharika commissioned the Chitipa Water Supply project, Mwabulambya expressed worry that the money Admarc had to buy maize from farmers in the district was not enough.
the venue of the launch
He boasted that the district can feed the whole country, but failure by Admarc to buy maize may force people to sell the grain to neighbouring Zambia or Tanzania.
“Chitipa is an agricultural district, and we normally have a lot of crops. But the problem with Admarc now is that their money for buying maize does not last long. It lasts just for hours, and you have people going back home with maize,” said Mwabulambya.
But Admarc spokesperson Agnes Chikoko Ndovie said in an interview that some depots are too small and in remote places, making it difficult for them to handle huge sums of money.
Admarc is buying the grain at K170 per kilogramme.
“We heard the complaint and what we will do now is improve our monitoring mechanism so that a depot does not completely run out of cash,” she said. n
