Government has approved compensation payments to poultry farmers affected by bird flu in the country with a total approved budget of approximately GH¢44 million.
The compensation forms part of government intervention to contain the spread of avian influenza that hit a number of poultry farmers in the country.
Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, who disclosed this in Parliament last Thursday in a answering a question, disclosed that the administration is also pursuing a number of measures to contain the situation.
The Minister was responding to a question that stood in the name of member for Dormaa East, Mr. Paul Apreku Twum-Barima who asked what the Ministry is doing to assist poultry farmers severely affected by the outbreak of the bird flu and measures being put in place to prevent the recurrence of the adversity.
According to him, as part of the intervention government has approved the Ministry’s action plan to stem the spread of the disease and also address the institutional weakness of the Veterinary Services Directorate (VSD).
He disclosed that the plan includes the recruitment of 1100 veterinary professionals for deployment throughout the country and indicated financial clearance to that effect has already been secured to cover the recruitment of an initial 550 professionals.
“The remaining 550 will be engaged within a period of two years to strengthen the institutional human resource capacity of the VSD. This has been lacking well before the government of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo assume office in 2017.
“Procurement of vehicles, motorbikes, chemicals and other logistics has been approved by the government to revamp the VSD to enhance operations manifested by effective surveillance and detection, rapid response and control of animal diseases, intensification of emphasis to ensure bio-security, depopulation and disinfection to eliminate any threat to public health”, he added.
Dr. Afriyie-Akoto stated that all these activities will be preceded by a rollout of a comprehensive sensitization programme nationwide by the end of the first week of February 2022.
He disclosed that an implementation committee to coordinate the entire programme and oversee the general containment of the bird flu will be launched today Friday 28th January 2022.
The Agric Minister stated that so far ten out of the 16 regions have recorded cases of the bird flu with 703,966 bird mortality recorded in the affected regions.
“Of this number 555,227 birds had to be destroyed as part of the containment measures by the Ministry while the remaining 143,406 deaths were a result of the HBI infections,” he said.
In response to another question that stood in the name of Dr. Kingsley Nyarko, MP for Kwadaso who asked what the Ministry is doing to address complaints of fertilizer shortage, Dr. Afriyie Akoto stated the COVID-19 pandemic has caused major disruption in the supply of fertilizer across the world.
Government, he said, is however taking major steps to ensure local production of fertilizer and encouragement of farmers to gradually shift to organic fertilizer, which is locally available.
According to him, frantic efforts are also being made to attract multi-billion-dollar investment in fertilizer manufacturing plants, which rely on surplus gas produced through offshore oil explorations.
He disclosed that the government is also collaborating with OCP Group of Companies, a Moroccan conglomerate to map out sites in Ghana according to their chemical composition, which will enable the use of blended fertilizers specific to soil types to promote efficient use of fertilizer and increase productivity.
