BUJUMBURA April 22nd (ABP) – Farmers in Kabezi commune are complaining that they have no market for selling oranges and tangerines. Those farmers complain when it is the peak harvest period for those fruits. On the hills, those fruits are no longer picked and remain on the trees even if they are ripe, for lack of a market for sale and those fruits end up detaching themselves from the trees, falling on the ground and rotting, a check on the site by ABP revealed.
In the Kiremba village, farmers indicate that the big buyers come in dribs and drabs. Those who came to stock up in large quantities for export no longer come for lack of fuel, according to Mrs. Geneviève Nzeyimana, a local farmer. Jacques Havyarimana, another farmer from the same village agrees with her. The trucks that came to stock up in large quantities to sell these fruits to the big markets no longer come, he added. The shortfall is huge, he said, explaining that a field that brought in between 1.5 and 2 million BIF during the peak harvest period, currently brings in around 800,000 BIF. People from Kiremba village have made it known that they do not know what to do because they find themselves in poverty.
They ask the competent authorities to look into the issue related to the fuel shortage so that the situation returns to normal. They propose as a long-term solution, to install a factory to transform those fruits into juice.
The big markets for the sale of oranges and tangerines produced in Kabezi commune are in particular those of the City of Bujumbura and Rumonge, without forgetting that some traders export them to DR Congo.