The IFAD country Program Officer Mr. Joseph Brima has paid cutesy calls and field visits to project staff and beneficiaries in the southern region. The visit according to the CPO is part of his normal routine to IFAD projects in the country and with the aim to follow up on implementations status; discuss critical concerns with the staff especially from recommendations made from the concluded IFAD supervision mission that was done virtually in April and to assess progress of implementation at the field level.

During the visit, the IFAD CPO first engaged staffs of the southern region where key issues from the supervision report were discussed for which project coordination and implementation status, staff welfare, staff orientation on financial management and procedures, the channel of communications and gaps etc. were discussed. The CPO gave staff the platform to clearly express their views and make recommendations to PMU on emerging issues from the field as when and how especially to changing procedures that can work well as they are in the best position to do so due to the fact that, they interface with beneficiaries more. He admonished staff to be professional while encouraging them to always work hard to exhaust their objectives set on the Annual Work Plan and Budget (AWPB) as their yearly appraisal are mainly based on that.

The CPO also visited the oil palm climate smart demonstration and nursery sites at Kalia community in Kakua Chiefdom, Bo district and the cocoa climate demonstration and nursery sites in Ngeiyawamei community, Peje Chiefdom, Pujehun district where he interacted with beneficiaries to know their concerns and their views about the project implementation so far. Most of the beneficiary expressed their excitements especially for the trainings they have been receiving from the farmer field school sessions on the agronomic and management practices of their tree crops.

“This oil palm will help my community to flee from the temptation of selling our lands to companies for merger sums especially when each beneficiary will be making not less than Le. 20,000,000 a year from the 2.5 acres of oil palm. This is even why we have taken more robust actions as community stakeholders to ensure that every beneficiary pay greater attention to managing their farms” said Mr. Lahai a beneficiary and section chief in Kalia Community.

The CPO promised that feedbacks obtained from the project staff, beneficiaries, Service Providers and community stakeholders will be taken into consideration and swift measures will be adopted by IFAD to address the challenges so as to improve on the progress made so far.