Three civil Society organisations are calling on the Ghana Cocoa Board to as a matter of urgency address the grievances of cocoa farmers through its Grievance and Redress Mechanisms.
The three, Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) and Civic Response and the University of Ghana School of Law mentioned deforestation, inadequate climate change initiatives and the continuous use of illegal pesticides, and prevalent hazardous child labour as some of the challenges bedevilling the sector which needed to be addressed.
According to them, the GRM was created by COCOBOD as a prerequisite for a $600 million syndicated loan arranged by the African Development Bank (AfDB) in 2018.
At a press conference in Accra on Friday, the Programmes Officer of Civic Response, Mr Raymond Ennin, said the system was inaccessible, ineffective, and had failed to achieve its set up objectives.