Why should Ghana import toothpicks and matches?—Amb. Boniface Gambila laments

Former Member of Parliament (MP) for the Nabdam District, Boniface Gambila have called on the government to ban the importation of rice, toothpicks, and matches into the country.

He said government must invest in key sectors of the economy including agriculture to make the country sufficient and create jobs for teeming unemployed youth.

He made the call during an exclusive interaction with this reporter.

According to the Amb. Gambila, “Is really difficult because the reality is hitching on all of us and all of us are not making effort to be productive because some of us don’t have the capacity. So, now it means that government should be able to identify that and provide the capacity so that people will move into doing something.

“So, Government should look into certain sectors and expand those sectors for people to be able to find something doing. As for this buy and sell, people like doing buy and sell. Block it. Ban the import of rice from Europe and all those places and let everybody go into the rice business in Ghana.

He noted that government must make a conscious effort to ban the importation of rice and promote the consumption of locally made food products.

"We should learn to eat our own local rice. At the moment, the imported rice is not banned and so, people are pretending that they can’t eat the local rice. But if you ban it, in times of war if foreign rice is not coming, won’t we eat the local rice?

"So, we are not being hard. We are not being pragmatic to ban certain things. There are certain imports we should ban. Why do we need toothpicks in this country, what for? We have a nim tree. If you eat and your meat gets stuck go and get a nim tree break it and sack it off. Why should we import matches when there was a matches factory, of course, those Nkrumah’s factories are now old models and technology has changed but is something that government could get the private sector to take it up. If you ban matches from coming into this country, a private Ghanaian will take it up," he stated.