By Adu Koranteng
The Member of Parliament for Dormaa East, Paul Apraku Twum Barimah, has called on President Akufo Addo to provide support for poultry farmers in the Bono regions to help keep them in business and sustain their livelihoods in these difficult times.
He made this passionate appeal on the floor of Parliament when he was asking the Minister of Food and Agriculture about what they are doing to support poultry farmers who have been severely affected by the recent outbreak of bird flu.
The Minister, Dr. Afriyie Akoto in reaction, acknowledged the outbreak and the impact it has had on Ghanaian farmers.
He said cabinet has approved the Ministry’s action plan to curb the infections.
These he said include payment of compensation packages to affected farmers as a payment component of a total approved budget of nearly Ghc44 million. He assured that the exercise would be undertaking transparently to enforce justice for all.
The minister said the ministry has received approval to recruit 1,500veterinary professionals and financial clearance has been given to recruit 515 of them instantly for national deployment. The rest, he indicated would be done within two years.
The Minister noted that the ministry of Food and Agriculture has also been procuring vehicles, motorbikes bicycles and other logistics to equip the veterinary service to revamp its operations through intensification of farm visits to ensure bio security, depopulation and disinfection and surveillance to ensure early detection to eliminate threat to public health.
According to the Minister of Food and Agriculture, the highly pathogenic, Avian Flu has affected 10 regions out of 16 regions and led to 703,966 mortalities since the outbreak. Based on this, 555,227 birds have been destroyed and 159 farms have been affected nationwide.
Ghana’s poultry industry has been hit with the bird flu, a malady that has caused the death of thousands of poultry birds with the bono regions being the hardest hit.
Paul Twum Barimah believes that providing financial support in addition to technical support buy government will help sustain the livelihood of the farmers in these difficult times as they work on modalities to curb the spread of the deadly chicken flu.
Experts have indicated that the outbreak of avian influenza has compounded the plight of Ghanaian poultry farmers.
They indicated that the flu outbreak coupled with the existing challenge of shortage and high cost of feed constituted double jeopardy to the farmers.
They claimed that the spread of the outbreak could have dire economic consequences for the industry, for jobs, and the entire Ghanaian economy if note well controlled.
He said people who took bank loans to stock their farms are losing investments as interests pile up, making it difficult to fulfill their parts of the obligation to their creditors. “Bird flu, also called avian influenza, is a viral infection that can infect not only birds, but also humans and other animals. Most forms of the virus are restricted to birds.
