The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has announced that it will no longer undertake the construction of cocoa roads across the country after the completion of ongoing ones.

The Cocoa Road Programme by COCOBOD was initiated to address the transportation challenges faced in bringing agro-inputs to cocoa farmers in those communities and in evacuating cocoa beans to Take Over Centres.

However, in an address at the 50th Anniversary Celebration symposium of the Cocoa Clinic, the Chief Executive Officer of COCOBOD, Joseph Boahen Aidoo said the policy will be scrapped following negotiations with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“The EU sent a team last year to do due diligence on sustainable production and when they came, they wanted to know why COCOBOD was involved in cocoa roads construction because it is not a core business of COCOBOD and they insisted that we take that venture out of our equation and of course, the IMF is also saying the same thing. They say that we can continue with what we are currently constructing and not start new ones.”

That notwithstanding, Joseph Boahen Aidoo also announced plans by COCOBOD to establish health centres across a number of cocoa-growing communities in the country to improve access to healthcare for cocoa farmers.

“I have had the experience where a woman who was in labor and couldn’t deliver had to be carried in a hammock and traveled over 28 kilometers and couldn’t survive and when we look at the countryside to see how our cocoa farmers struggle to access health delivery, you will be touched to do something and that is why as an institution, it is important to bring health services and facilities as closer to these farmers as possible.”