Director of Communication for the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO), Mr. George Ayisi has said that his outfit and the Environmental Protection Agency is yet to ascertain the cause of the recent mass tilapia death in the Eastern Region.
Last week, there were reports that over 100 tonnes of tilapia have been found dead and disposed off in various fish farms in the Eastern Region.
According to Mr. Ayisi, although the initial suspicion is that the deaths were as a result of the cross breeding of local tilapia and other foreign ones, he says that until appropriate investigations are conducted, they can’t state the cause of death.
“….the initial suspicion is that there has been a problem with cross breeding of the local tilapia and then the foreign ones that they have brought into the pond…..the EPA is taking the samples to the lab for testing so until that report comes out this is the initial reasoning for the mass death of the tilapia…’’
Speaking on our news analysis program Behind the Headlines, Mr. Ayisi mentioned that NADMO had stopped the sale of tilapia from the affected farmers as some of them have attempted to process the dead tilapia into salted fish.
He said the move was to avert all potential harm that can affect its consumers.
“..it was established that some of the farmers weretrying to turn those dead tilapia into koobi in the local parlance salted fish , so our officers were able to get that and then they stopped them and destroyed those ones…”
Mr. Ayisi also cautioned Ghanaians against consuming tilapia, especially during the festive season as the cause of death of the fishes is still under investigation.
He however assured the public that NADMO was treating the situation with the necessary urgency to safeguard the wellbeing of Ghanaians.
“…for now what we would say as Nadmo is that we should careful in our decision to eat tilapia, for now, we are not saying don’t eat it, because initially we had a similar incidence around the Asutsuare area and it turned out to be lack of oxygen that resulted in the mass death and that is not disastrous to human consumption…we are doing everything to ensure the safety of the consuming public especially those within the catchment area” he said.
Story by: Khadijah Latif/universnewsroom.com
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