Over fifty pig farmers, their dependents and farm labourers last Thursday witnessed the destruction of their livelong investments when the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) task force demolished the farms near the Korle Lagoon where the animals are reared.
The animals and the living abode of the farmers were demolished on Thursday after a 15-hour deadline expired last week. Teresa Ameley Tagoe, Deputy Minister of Works and Housing and MP for Ablekuma South gave the order.
Apart from pigs, other animals destroyed include goats and fowls when a combined team of armed police and the AMA task force using a bulldozer hired from Taysec, a construction firm, moved in and carried out the exercise.
Ironically, the incident happened a day after the Deputy Minister had met the farmers and two other MPs, Nii Ayibontey, Victor Okulley Nortey, and a representative of Centre for Public Interest Law (CEPIL), Farouk Braimah Rabiu, at the Ministry of Works and Housing to ensure the smooth relocation of the farmers.
At the meeting the Deputy Minister suggested an alternative site for the animals to be moved to.
In a twist of events, the Tagoe made a U-turn and ordered the farmers to remove all structures before the next day or face the extinction of their livelihood because the financiers of the Korle Lagoon Project were in town to inspect the project.
Earlier, the MP for the area, Ayibontey had asked the farmers to look for land and inform him so they could be assisted to acquire it. The farmers were able to locate a suitable site at Gbawe in Accra.
But the MP and the Deputy Minister were dismayed when the farmers informed them about the cost involved in acquiring and transferring the animals to the new site.
The Metropolitan Chief Executive, Solomon Ofei Darko, in an interview with the media explained that "the AMA and the Ministry of Works and Housing would try again to convinced the farmers to leave the area ."
Unfortunately the AMA and the project authorities failed to convince the farmers to move hence the destruction.
The farmers originally planned to resist the AMA task force but for the intervention of the CEPIL, that represents the interest of the vulnerable and under privilege in society. CEPIL assured the farmers that they would intervene and did initiate a court action.
The project authorities, however, reject the arguments of the farmers. They insist that the original occupants of the area have been compensation and therefore the present occupants whose animals were destroyed are mere squatters.
An executive member of the Pig Farmers Association, Ofei Nelson, said that the compensation in question was in respect of pigs destroyed as result of swine fever which swept across the region recently nearly two years ago. He said officials from the Veterinary Services ordered the destruction of the pigs to prevent the spread of the disease. After six months, the ban on pig farming was lifted thus paving the way for their farming to start again.
Commenting on the demolishing exercise in an interview with Public Agenda, Braimah Rabiu, a CEPIL Programme Officer, expressed shock at the conduct of the project authorities and the AMA. "The authorities have not been transparent, honest and fair in their dealings with the pig farmers," he charged.
