News:
August 19, 2018
Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, George Oduro is blaming the Ministry of Finance for failing to release funds to compensate thirty-seven (37) farmers who were affected by the Avian Influenza in the country recently.
According to the 2016 Auditor General’s report year ending December 31st 2016, thirty-seven (37) out of the sixty-four (64) farmers whose poultry farm products were destroyed between May and October 2015 had not been paid.
Twenty-seven (27) farmers whose poultry products were destroy were compensated, he further told the committee.
Mr. George Oduro made this known at the on-going public hearing of the Public Account Committee of Parliament, adding that the amount involved for the compensation was, one million four hundred and forty-eight thousand, one hundred and fifty-seven, two pesewa Ghana cedis (GHc 1, 448,157.02)
He further told the committee that out of the eleven million Ghana cedis compensation approved by Parliament to deal with the outbreak, when his Ministry wrote to the Finance Ministry, it only released seven million Ghana cedis (GHc7 million) cedis to be paid to the farmers, leaving four million Ghana cedis (GHc 4 million).
Dr. Clement Apaak a member of the PAC questioned the Deputy Minister whether compensating the remaining thirty-seven farmers would not affect the industry? This, he responded that compensation is one of the measures to contain the situation and there are other measures that had to be put in place.
The Deputy Minister further added that there is the need to have outbreak detection surveillance, sensitization of the public, laboratory capacity building, border harmonization meetings with neighboring countries, for total containment of outbreaks.
“We could not have active surveillance which is very important in containing outbreak of poultry diseases because of inadequate funds”, he said.
By: Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/ghanamps.com