Louga, May 21 (APS) – The youth president of the college of the National Council for Consultation and Cooperation of Rural People (CNCR), Alioune Badara Diongue, stressed the need to readjust the shares of the State and farmers in reimbursement agricultural credit.
”The State pays 5% of the agricultural credit repayment rate, while farmers bear 7.5%. Now we want an inversion of the shares, so that the State takes care of the 7.5% instead of the 5%,” he declared.
Alioune Badara Diongue spoke to journalists, at the end of a day of consultation with young people from the village of Niouroukhléne (north) on the revision of the agro-sylvio-pastoral and fisheries law. He indicated that ”this day of consultation was an opportunity for the young people of the village to discuss various questions relating to the revision of the agro-sylvopastoral law”.
According to him, ”the objective of these discussions is to inform young people of the existence and content of the law, to discuss their place in this legislative framework, and to find ways for them to be integrated into as actors in their own right, and not simply as labor or support”.
Alioune Badara Diongue also underlined ”the importance of fully integrating fishing stakeholders into this process, a request which is part of the grievances for the revision of the law”.
In this dynamic, the youth president of the CNCR college welcomed “the instruction of the President of the Republic, during the Council of Ministers, asking the Minister of Agriculture to take measures for the revision and updating of this law”.
”We, the CNCR colleges, in collaboration with other peasant organizations such as ECOSES, which I coordinate, as well as the National Youth Council of Senegal, have initiated grassroots discussions to collect the opinions of young people ” he explained.
Mr. Diongue also mentioned ”the need to take into account the concerns of women, particularly with regard to access to land”.
”It is legitimate that women are taken seriously in all discussions concerning financing, access to agricultural inputs, land and water,” he argued.
The young people from the CNCR college also underlined “the importance of continuing discussions on issues such as agricultural insurance, land and water control” and expressed their “satisfaction to see young people from different regions to mobilize for these issues”.
DS/ABB/ASG
