SOCOPAM: FCFA 530 Million For Bankim Fishermen
By Godlove BAINKONG, in Bankim, Cameroon Tribune, 12-05-2013
The area’s agropole programme was launched on Saturday May 11 with a yearly target of 1,814 metric tones.
Government
and a confederation of fish farmers in Bankim, Mayo Banyo Division of
the Adamawa Region, SOCOPAM, have put together FCFA 530 million to step
up fish production in the area from the current 453.6 metric tones per
annum to 1,814 metric tones as well as boost its local processing and
marketing. This is through the agropole programme that officially went
underway in Bankim Subdivision on Saturday May 11.
The
government’s share of the funding to the tune of FCFA 225 million
comprises fishing equipment to the farmers, the construction of a young
fish centre, a wharf for the sale of fish, a borehole at Biamo fishing
village, some 11 km from Bankim town and a market in Bankim. There is
also the rehabilitation of a cool store, a 500-m electric network, the
rehabilitation of an 11-km access road from Bankim to Biamo, capacity
building as well as the introduction of cage fish rearing at the Mapé
dam. Meanwhile, the fish producers raised their counterpart funding of
FCFA 305 million thanks to a local-based credit union, Rural Investment
Credit.
Speaking
during the launching ceremony, the National Coordinator of Agropole,
Jean Claude Medou, said with the programme, Bankim fishermen could
harvest 150 metric tones per month from artisanal fishing as well as 226
metric tones per quarter from commercial aquaculture. He noted that the
State crafted the Agropole programme to bridge the demand/supply gap of
agro-food, vegetal and forest products in the country. The State, Mr
Medou said, imports about 170,000 metric tones of fish yearly amounting
to FCFA 15 billion.
The
Divisional Officer for Mayo Banyo Division, Boyomo Donatien, who chaired
the ceremony said fish farming constitutes one of the mainstays of the
people of Bankim and assisting them to boost production, processing and
sale, as government has done through the agropole programme, was
synonymous with improving their livelihoods and the area’s
socio-economic development. “The agropole programme in Bankim will not
only transform the Subdivision and the entire Mayo Banyo Division given
that we will multiply by four the actual fish production but will also
boost youth employment in the area,” he said.
A view
corroborated by other speakers like the Mayor of Bankim, Djowe Philippe
and the Secretary General of the federation of Bankim fish farmers,
Wahoum Bruno Guillaume who both saw in the agropole programme a new dawn
for the locality’s over 10,000 fishermen from diverse nationalities who
comb the over 3.3 billion cubic metrics of water of the Mbam and Mapé
rivers to harvest fish for the thousand buyers from the West, North
West, Centre and Adamawa regions as well as from neighbouring countries
like Nigeria.
According
to the modus operandi of the Agropole programme, the State support
comes only when the beneficiary organ has mobilised its own counterpart
funding. So far, the programme has been launched in Bomono; Littoral,
Kribi; South and now Bankim; Adamawa Regions.
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