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Ghana Needs A Bill To Sanitise Cattle Rearing--MP

By CitifmOnline
Politics Ghana Needs A Bill To Sanitise Cattle Rearing--MP
JAN 14, 2018 LISTEN

The MP for Ledzokuku, Dr. Okoe Boye, has called for a Bill that, when passed, will regulate the management of cattle in Ghana.

Such a Bill could also potentially encourage more Ghanaians to get into cattle rearing, the MP said on The Big Issue.

His comments followed escalated tensions in the Asante Akyem North District after four security personnel, including three military officers and a police officer, who had been deployed to the area to evict nomadic herdsmen and their cattle, were shot by an unknown assailant at Agogo.

The government has since dispatched about 200 personnel drawn from the military and police services to the Asante Akyem North and Sekyere Afram Plains districts of the Ashanti Region to flush out nomadic herdsmen who are reportedly terrorizing residents of those areas.

But Dr. Okoe Boye warned that “if you displace them [the herdsmen and cattle], they will find themselves somewhere else.”

“We have to have a Bill which will regulate the sector and encourage more [people to get in]. When it is a regulated area, it will not be left for, [for want of a better term] only to Fulani. We will have a lot of farmers who can go into that sector.”

“It is a very lucrative sector and close to 80 percent of the cattle do not belong to the guys. So now you have Ghanaians who are giving their cattle to the so-called Fulani people to manage for them because they know it is a sector that can generate money,” he said.

On the Agogo matter, Dr. Okoe Boye said, “once a court has ruled, we have to take steps to enforce but beyond that, the Bill is critical.”

In the meantime, the government has said a programme to restrict and ranch cattle will commence upon the completion of the operation in the Asante Akyem North and Sekyere Afram Plains districts, to provide a long-term solution to the decades-old tensions arising from the herding of cattle in these areas.

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