Features
Bird flu: Govt support for poultry farmers
Poultry farming has become an important business in the sense that when well organised, it can defy all dangers and rake in the needed profits unimaginable to farmers.
Many young people would want to engage in poultry farming especially after tertiary education but the fear is often of the risk associated with that kind of business. Indeed, farming can be undertaken by an individual or group of people who may come together in form of joint partnership.
It requires some financial capital which may not be obtained easily by individuals or even groups of people who agree to come together for that purpose. For this reason, they may have no choice but go to the bank to seek financial credit.
GOOD BUSINESS PLANS
Those who are fortunate or are able to provide good business plans receive the assistance they need from the banks. It may not be easy to get this form of assistance from the banks because of the risk associated with poultry farming.
During this business, there is always the need for the farmers to pay great attention to the birds from the beginning to the end. They’ll need to make sure the poultry is kept away from any kind of diseases and that the needed drugs are also provided for the birds to make them healthy and strong.
As a result of poultry farming, certain individuals have become very rich but the point must be made that it is not easy to make huge profits as a result of poultry farming as a business. What this means is that poultry farming is a good business venture but the farmers will always need to be very careful to ensure that they do not lose their birds.
GOOD SUPPLEMENT
The output from poultry is good in the sense that it supplements produce from crop farming. Crop farming provides foodstuffs which may be consumed by the population but we would need to combine this consumption with meat, fish or some other form of items like poultry. The benefits of poultry output are numerous. In the first place, it provides fresh chicken which is combined with foodstuffs and consumed by people. This ensures healthy growth of the body for both children and adults with the exception of those who are vegetarians. For non-vegetarians, poultry serves as a good source of protein for the body.
Apart from the poultry itself, another benefit comes in form of eggs. The eggs produced in this way serve as a source of business for many people in the country. The eggs serve as business items for many women who rely on such produce to fry or boil them for consumers. Other individuals also combine the eggs with the food they prepare and process them for consumption by people at the restaurant or other places where finished food is sold.
MEANS OF LIVELIHOOD
All this shows that the poultry business is very important and serves as a means of livelihood for a number of people. It is for this reason that the Government of Ghana is doing all it can to protect poultry farmers in the country and where necessary, support them with financial returns.
In spite of all this, the poultry business can be very risky in the sense that poultry farmers can easily lose their capital when the birds become attacked by Bird’s Flu or some other disease. This explains why poultry farmers are always very close to the health experts who have been trained in a professional manner to provide assistance to them as and when the need arises. It is for this reason that veterinary doctors are ever available and made ready to come to the assistance of our poultry farmers.
BIRD FLU OUTBREAK
A few months back, Ghana began to experience Bird Flu and other diseases in some parts of the country. Poultry farms in the Greater Accra Region as well as Ashanti and other places became affected but veterinary doctors went to their aid to bring the situation under control. However, great losses were made due to the slaughter of the birds that were suffering from the disease.
In view of this development, the government was forced to make money available to support the poultry farmers who lost their birds as a result of the infection of the disease on their farms. Those who had the birds destroyed were given certificates as proof. Government has already made available GH¢40 million to support the farmers who experienced losses. Out of the GH¢40 million promised, about GH¢21 million is now available for distribution to poultry farmers who can provide evidence of certificates for the destruction of their birds when they contracted diseases.
SALE OF HEALTHY BIRDS
We must always make sure that animals from the poultry farms are strong and healthy because if we are able to sell the healthy birds to consumers, we are likely to make far more money than would be the case when we are compensated by government. Half a loaf is better than none so the GH¢40 million provided by government as compensation would fulfil a good purpose. It will encourage our farmers to keep working hard despite the risk involved.
We commend government for this support especially at this time when we are now recovering from COVID-19 amid economic difficulties that have characterised many business transactions in the country.
Diseases that affect our poultry keep coming in to affect the poultry business and when we deal with them, they go away only to come back again at some time. The poultry farmers and the poultry health experts together with government must collaborate to work hard to ensure that such diseases are brought under total control and where possible prevented from affecting the poultry farms. This is what will help the poultry farming business to flourish well in this country.
Contact email/whatsApp address of author:
Pradmat2013@gmail.com (0553318911)
By Dr Kofi Amponsah-Bediako
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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