TZW
The remarks were aired by some participants attending a sensitisation workshop for Local Government Authorities staff and Key Stakeholders in Fostering Innovation for Sustainable Socio – Economic Development on innovative Clusters programme.
The oil millers claimed that due to low quality of sunflower seeds supplied to farmers, production of oil has always been low in comparison to harvest from quality seeds which were rare in the region.
They further claimed that the harvest from the farmers was not enough to suffice the demand of the industry. “As a result, we work for 4 - 5 months only and remain redundant for the rest of the season.
This causes unnecessary inconveniences for us to pay various government taxes,” they claimed. In order to keep the industry going, they suggested, the government should start providing farmers with high quality seeds; offer them training on better practices for sunflower cultivation and encourage large scale farming,
so as to meet full demand of more than 160 sunflower oil millings available in the region. SIDO Regional Manager, Ms Shoma Kibende said that the main reason behind involving key stakeholders such as TFDA and Costech in the workshop was to ensure the sunflower oil produced met the quality standards required for domestic and foreign markets.
Mr Furaha Kabuje, a Researcher with COSTECH said the aim of their activities was centred on transferring appropriate technology to all entrepreneurs, including producers of sunflower oil. The two-day workshop was organised by Singida Small Industries Development Organisation (SIDO) in collaboration with the National Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) through Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) fundin