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Ghana not rejecting rice from coronavirus countries- Minister

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The Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto has dismissed reports that Ghana is unable to import rice in the wake of the ongoing coronavirus epidemic.

According to him, the reports are incorrect.

“I don’t think the virus has infected rice. Has it?” he said when answering a question at the Meet the Press Series in Accra.

In Western social media, some users have called for a boycott over Chinese goods as consumers fear that the virus could be transmitted via contact with products imported from the Asian giant.

But Agric Minister, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, speaking on Tuesday, March 10, said he is yet to hear so far that imports from China carry the new coronavirus.

“I thought it was only the human beings who are affected. I haven’t heard it.”

“So we are not rejecting rice from coronavirus areas.”

Ban of rice and poultry

Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto also debunked rumours that government has banned the importation of rice into the country.

“I don’t believe in banning. I told the Nigerian Minister for Food and Agric in Rome, three weeks ago, that they making a very sad mistake by closing their borders.”

“In Ghana, we are talking to each other. We are all citizens; we all want this country to progress. Why would you say that you want to spoil somebody’s business?” he questioned.

“If you give him enough logic and he sees that there’s an opportunity which would at least make him at par and not let him lose, he would cooperate with you.”

“We are not banning anything. We are going to give the opportunity to our Ghanaian farmers. Instead of Vietnamese, Thai, Brazilian and American farmers, we want our farmers to do it and they can do it better than these farmers,’’ he observed.

“Our farmers produce fresh rice. What come in are sometimes two, three years old, especially the poultry. As for the meat and the rest, I really pity those who eat imported poultry because some of them are from the animal mortuary. They have been put away for about eight years and pumped with all kinds of chemicals and they offload it on us because our systems are weak and we cannot check.”

Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto disclosed that it took a long time to destroy the contaminated gizzards that hit Ghana’s market.

“Do you know how long it took us eventually to destroy one container of gizzard? There were four containers, they managed to bribe their way and take the three away and eventually that one, we had to go about four times.”

“What we are doing is to convince our stakeholders to agree on a certain way of doing things,” he added.

Story filed by Michael Nabary.

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