Vet Dept asks for resources to vaccinate herdsmen, cattle
The Veterinary Services Department of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture says it has animal quarantine centres in some border towns such as Paga and Hamile which can be resourced to vaccinate cattle and their herdsmen against the spread of contagious diseases.
The Deputy Director of the Department, Dr Anthony Nsoh Akunzule, who said this at a forum in Accra recently, said the centres which had the capacity to issue Intra-National Vaccination Certificates in accordance with the ECOWAS Trans-Humans protocols, were not functioning for lack of budget allocations.
Dr Akunzule made the revelation during a stakeholder engagement facilitated by the Business Advocacy Challenge Fund (BUSAC Fund). It was part of a BUSAC-funded study by the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG) into how to regulate the entry, movement and activities of cattle herdsmen, particularly the alien herdsmen, in the country.
The peasant farmers believe that the herdsmen and their cattle caused numerous challenges such as the destruction of food crops, indiscriminate bushfires, felling of trees and pollution of water bodies which was already affecting the country’s food security.
As part of the study the PFAG sent a representation on a study tour to some Sahelean countries, such as Burkina Faso and Mali to find out how they went about resolving the challenge.
Cattle Ranching law
According to the PFAG, the menace required the urgent passage of a Cattle Ranching law to regulate the entry, movement and activities of cattle herdsmen.
But the deputy director of the Veterinary Services Department said the ministry was already at the forefront of revising the Diseases of Animals Act, 1961 (Act 83) to refresh it into the Veterinary and Livestock Improvement Bill.
He said the revision process however started in 2003 would be supported with the Ghana Livestock Development Policy and Strategy, which he said was being finalised for Cabinet’s approval.
Dr Akunzule said the revised bill would have provisions on the movement of animals, stipulating permits for so doing as well as designations for movement, adding that due to the ECOWAS protocol on Trans-Humans (the movement of people), it required measures such as the Quarantine centres to vaccinate the herdsmen and their cattle against the spreading of contagious diseases such as the Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia.
He said considering Ghana’s small cattle population of about 1.5 million, the migration of the alien herds therefore came with economic and social impacts, such as supplementing the local cattle stock to feed a growing population of about 26 million.
A member and former President of the PFAG, Mohammed Adam Nashiru, who put across the case of the more than 35,000-member association at a forum in Accra, said the absence of such a law was drawing the country back in achieving food security because the alien
“There are skirmishes and conflicts all over. There have been confrontations between food crop producers and herdsmen, sometimes leading to the death of some farmers, women and children. We need to act now to ensure that our farmers can produce in peace and have access to arable land and water,” Mr Nashiru said.
Mr Nashiru said the illegal activities of the alien herdsmen would render initiatives such as the channelling of 10 per cent of the country’s budget resources to agriculture ineffective because the farmers would not have the conducive environment to ply their trade.
Ghana has signed on to the African Union Maputo Protocol of ‘Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme to channel 10 per cent of its budget into agriculture.
Best practice
“This action we have started needs an urgent attention,” explaining that in spite of the ECOWAS Protocol on Trans-Human Movements, member countries such as Burkina Faso and Mali had laws that made it impossible for animals to even trample upon the edges of a farm.
“When farms are destroyed, the cattle and ranches could be traced because they are registered and assigned to graze in designated places,” Mr Nashiru stated.
Again in Burkina Faso, when the herdsmen migrate with their animals they are stopped at the border and vaccinated at the aliens’ own cost. They were given a period to stay, after which they were ejected, he stated.
Working together
Other members of the panel, Mr William A Aquitto, the Deputy Ranking Member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Agric and Cocoa Affairs, as well as the National Chairman of the Ghana National Association of Cattle Farmers, Mr Imam Hanafi Sonde, both agreed with Mr Nashiru and Dr Akunzule for a law to holistically deal with the menace of alien herdsmen and the destructions they caused.
The panellists, particularly the peasant farmers and the Cattle farmers agreed, however that they had to collaborate and dialogue in resolving the matter and coming out with the law because they essentially plied the same trade – farming – both of which dates back to pre-historic times.