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The President of IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe is asking whether the 12 vehicles the Ministry of Food and Agriculture is demanding to combat the outbreak of bird flu will have intensive care units for the birds.

“I want to find out whether the car will have an intensive care unit to take care of the birds that are sick,” he asked.

The Minority in Parliament accused the Ministry of scheming to get new vehicles which they believe are not pressing, compared to the lack of chemicals to contain the outbreak of bird flu.

However, the Ministry of Agriculture has defended the request saying, the vehicles would help them to move around the country to help affected farms.

Speaking on Citi FM’s The Big Issue, the IMANI boss said the outbreak of bird flu in Ghana is a “serious matter… in countries like Korea, somebody resigned because they couldn’t manage it well.”

Mr. Cudjoe cautioned that the nation must be very careful because “we don’t know the vehicles that will be needed will be for intensive resuscitation, especially when birds are in short supply. Don’t forget; we import a lot of poultry. This is a national security threat. We need to safeguard the few birds we have.”

The Editor of the Business Finder newspaper, Toma Imihere on the same platform said although he understands the need for vehicles to fight bird flu, he was of the view that with the current economic situation, the government cannot afford to buy 12 new vehicles.

He asked, “in these difficult times we are going through, are we saying that the Ministry of Food and Agric doesn’t have 12 vehicles to re-assign temporarily for this issue that we have to buy fixed assets in order to solve a temporary problem?”

“I believe that we should have done our best to re-assign existing vehicles,” he added

Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer of the Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors, Senyo Hosi opined that bird flu is a very serious issue “and we should support government responsibly in every way we can to help eradicate this problem.”