Stanley Ahiaku, the Head of Agric Department, Asamankese Senior High (SHS) has kick against the setting up of a guinea fowl processing factory in the Bawku Municipality of the Upper East Region. He said the government should rather focus on revamping the poultry sector with subsidies to encourage production and consumption.
President Akufo Addo announced the construction of a guinea fowl processing factory in the Bawku Municipality when he called on the Paramount Chief of the Kusaug Traditional Area, Zugraan Naba Asigri Abugrago Azoka II, as part of his day’s visit to the Upper East Region.
Reacting to this on Plan B FM ‘Nkosuo Nsem’ with Ohene Addo, Mr. Stanley Ahiaku, said the government should reduce the importation of poultry products and also concrete intervention to strengthen the poultry industry.
“It’s a good thing to set up guinea fowl processing factory; I’m not against it. This is not the first time we are hearing this, but we should ask ourselves why guinea fowl processing factory? he quizzed.
“I know its early days yet, but I want the president to come again with a project blueprint on how we are going to authorize this factory, what informed the decision? we import a lot of poultry products into the country which is affecting us, so I expect the government to focus on increasing local production and ban the importation of poultry products not guinea fowl production. If you compare the consumption of chicken and guinea fowl in the country, you would notice that Ghanaians prefer chicken to that of guinea fowl. So it would have been prudent for the government to focus more on revamping the poultry industry,” he indicated
In Ghana, data shows that in 2017, over 135,000 tonnes of frozen chicken, which is about 112 million birds, was imported from the European Union. The figure was a 76 percent increase over what was imported in the previous year.
There is an annual increase in chicken consumption of about six percent in the country.
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