Bird flu: FG suspends payment of compensation to farmers

The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has suspended payment of compensation to poultry farmers whose birds were depopulated as means of containing bird flu outbreak in the country.
The Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Sonny Echono, who made this known at a stakeholders meeting on Wednesday in Abuja, said the suspension was until the disease was contained.
Echono said the technical meeting was aimed at bringing to an end the current outbreak of avian influenza expeditiously.
Echono said payment of compensation was used to cushion the effect of losses farmers may have incurred and to encourage them to report suspected case of the virus in their farms.
He, however, alleged that some farmers because of the compensation were not complying with bio-security measures, hence the spread of the disease had continued.
The permanent secretary said non compliance to bio-security measure was undermining strategies like depopulation and restriction in movement of poultry products, which were put in place by government to curb the virus.
He said: “We have noticed that the payment of compensation to farmers has had a negative impact, discouraging the adoption of bio-security measures.
“Some people believe that once their birds are infected and depopulated, they would be paid some compensation.
“With effect from today, we will suspend payment of compensation till such a time we can be assured that the measures being taken on the bio-security are sufficient to guarantee that we bring this current resurgence to an expeditious end.”
Echono explained that the reason for the suspension was to enforce compliance and encourage poultry farmers to improve hygiene on their farms.
He said the virus had spread through 85 Local Government Areas across 21 states and the FCT and had affected 491 farms with 1.6 million birds depopulated.
The permanent secretary said this required about N1.1 billion to be paid as compensation to affected farms.
According to him, the burden had been on the shoulders of the Federal Government and some development partners.
Echono said a total of N387 million have been paid to poultry owners whose farms were depopulated, while N263 million was in the process of being paid to 108 farmers.
He said the ministry had noticed that mandatory disease controls activities were not being undertaken by state departments of Veterinary Services.
Echono alleged that members of Poultry Association of Nigeria in the states were also not up and doing.
The permanent secretary said henceforth, payment of compensation would be shared among the Federal, State, Local Governments and PAN.
Reacting, the Director General of PAN, Ogalo Apka, said no poultry farmer would invest his money into poultry and carelessly allow the farm get infested by disease and wait for government to pay compensation.
According to Apka, a laying bird is worth N10,000 and farmers would not exchange it for N500, which was being paid as compensation per bird depopulated.
He said the essence of farmers keeping poultry was to make gain and not to be negligent or be waiting for compensation.
He said an average poultry farmer is aware of bio-security measure.
He said what should be fundamentally done was to enforcement movement of poultry products and conducting active surveillance.