Goats Take Over the Pwalugu Tomato Factory

By Joseph Osei. 

Tomato farmers in the upper east region are left high and dry by the northern star tomatoes factory which assured them the factory’s preparedness to purchase their product to avoid repetition of a glut, diseases and poor marketing of their products which lead to many farmers committing suicide in 2009.

It would be recalled that in March 2010, the government indicated through its sector Minister, Hannah Tetteh, that it had revived the Northern Star Tomato factory with an investment of $1.7million, adding that the factory was going to operate at full capacity to process 500,000 tonnes of tomatoes a day.

The Minister after an inspection tour of the factory in March 2010 even indicated that that with the investments yielding so much fruit, the factory was even considering going into the processing of mango and other fruits and vegetables and called on all farmers in the region to go into the production of tomatoes as there is ready market for their produce.

However, the visit to the factory exposed the sorry state of the factory and its equipments. Not only had the factory been totally abandoned with no management, staff or associated worker in sight, on what was supposed to be a busy working day, but many of the equipment at the factory, which were imported by the former Kufuor government before it left power, have been left in a total state of ruin as they have been subjected to the vagaries of rain and the sun.

A careful look at the factory premises would leave no one in doubt that the factory has not worked in many years. The only moving beings or objects on the factory premises were a number of goats who had gladly sought refuge at the abandoned premises and who were going about their activities unrestrained while one could also find a stockpile of corn which had been also left to decay at the premises.

The erstwhile Kufuor administration around 2007 initiated the process of reviving the Pwalugu Tomato factory established under first President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah when it imported and installed equipments worth several millions but could not complete the resuscitation before it left office in January 2009 and it was this process the NDC claimed in 2010 to have finished and production started.