Nana Gyekye Lartey complained about the situation, where some of them adjusted cocoa weighing scales to shortchange the farmer.

He said they had been forced to live with the criminal practice for far too long and it was time the Cocobod acted decisively to make sure that they derived optimal benefits from their toil.

He told the District Chief Executive (DCE), Mr. Alexander Frimpong, who was on a day’s visit to the community - to interact with the people and to learn at first hand their felt needs, that the cheating was more pronounced in the difficult-to-reach farming areas.

He added that some of the PCs, for unexplained reasons and at times amid feeble protest by the farmers, had also been making money deductions from what should legitimately paid to them for cocoa sold to the LBCs.

Mr. Frimpong vowed to go to do everything to help rein in the unscrupulous clerks and asked the offenders to reform in their own interest.

He said steps would be taken to protect the farmer and this would include unannounced inspection of cocoa weighing scales to “weed out those out there cheating and denying the hard working farmers of what is rightly theirs”.

He announced the start of the distribution of chemicals for the mass spraying exercise in the district and asked that the farmers cooperated with the spraying gangs to achieve the intended outcome.

He underlined the government’s determination to go the extra mile to make farming more rewarding and attractive.