The Birim North District Assembly has celebrated its 33rd edition of the Farmers Day alongsides the World AIDS Day at Asuabena in the Birim North District.

The programme was to reward dedicated and hardworking and motivate farmers in the community to become more productive.

They were presented with items such as; Television sets, fridges, rubber bowls, tricycle, bars of soap, water tanks, knapsack spraying machines, cutlasses and certificates.

Speaking on the theme “Farming for Food and Jobs”, Mr. Ivan Akuttey, the District Agriculture Director commended farmers in the district for embracing the government’s ‘Planting for food and jobs’ programme.

He assured governmental efforts at promoting agriculture in the district and urged farmers to enroll onto the other programmes to enable them better their standard of living.

He hinted that over sixty farmers across the Birim North District have so far benefitted from the government’s ‘Planting for food and jobs’ programme since its inception.

Hon. Raymond Nana Damptey, the District Chief Executive (DCE) outlined some of the programmes as government Fertilizer Subsidy, Planting for jobs and industry and the Pilot project to supply water to cocoa farms all year round and therefore entreated farmers to take advantage of it toincrease their yield.

He added that all those programmes were aimed at making agriculture more attractive to the youth to help reduce the unemployment problems among the youth in the country.

He said, regarding the government’s ‘One District, one factory’ programme, the assembly has decided on Oil Palm Production and pleaded with the traditional authorities to avail land for production of more oil palm to feed the factory.

Mr. Thomas Azurago, the District Director of Health Services expressed worry at the increase of the HIV/ AIDS disease in the district and advised that the public be on the guard to help reduce the menace, adding that his establishment had targeted pregnant women to protect babies against the disease.

He advised against discriminating against HIV/AIDS patients.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Mr Daniel Sarpong, a 68 year old farmer who won the 2017 district Best Farmer advised the youth to create jobs for themselves by venturing into agriculture to help reduce the unemployment rate facing the country.

GNA