The Association of Seedling Contractors in the Ashanti Region has said that it does not have a clear figure of how much money the government owes its members for supplying seedlings for tree planting activities.
The Association had previously demanded that the government pay them GH¢28 million for providing seedlings for the Green Ghana Project, a national initiative to plant at least 20 million trees across the country in 2022 to combat deforestation and climate change.
However, Samuel Amoah, a member of the Plantation and Seedlings Scheme, said that they do not know the exact amount of their debt. He said only the government can tell them how much they are owed.
Mr. Amoah explained that it is hard to calculate the total debt because the seedlings came from different parts of the country, making it difficult to track the payments.
“We have supplied seedlings to the government from various regions. We have done so for both editions of the Green Ghana Project in 2021 and 2022, as well as for other regular tree planting programmes that the government has been running,” he said.
He also claimed that the “government did not buy from us for this year’s Green Ghana Project and we are wondering where they got their seedlings from”.
“We cannot just take any action without proper dialogue, so we have been trying to engage with the government, but we are not seeing any positive steps being taken to pay us. We have also petitioned a respected person to intervene and we are appealing to the government to come to our rescue and pay us what we deserve,” Mr. Amoah added.
