The Ranking Member on Parliament’s Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs Committee, Dr Isaac Yaw Opoku, has urged the government to conduct a comprehensive review of the first phase of the Nkoko Nkitinkiti programme before proceeding with the second phase.

According to him, the ministry must take seriously concerns raised by poultry farmers and other stakeholders and address implementation challenges that emerged during the initial rollout of the programme.

Dr Opoku made the call while reacting to issues raised by the President of the Poultry Farmers Association of Ghana, George Dassah, who had questioned aspects of the programme’s implementation and warned that it may fail to achieve its intended objective if key problems are not corrected.

Speaking in an interview on Joy FM’s Top Story, Dr Opoku said he agreed with the concerns raised by the poultry farmers and believes the Ministry of Food and Agriculture should pause procuring birds for Members of Parliament under the Nkokɔ Nkitinkiti initiative to assess the first phase before expanding the intervention.

“I think, yes, I would support what the poultry president said. I stated in my earlier submission that the minister should take our advice on board, issue a comprehensive review of the first phase, and address the challenges in the first phase before they roll out the second phase.”

The Nkoko Nkitinkiti programme forms part of the government’s efforts to boost local poultry production and reduce the country’s dependence on imported chicken. Under the initiative, birds are distributed to households and farmers with the aim of supporting local poultry rearing and encouraging reinvestment into production.

However, the programme has recently come under scrutiny, with poultry farmers citing weak market linkages, inadequate beneficiary orientation and poor implementation as major obstacles.

Dr Opoku said available evidence from some constituencies suggests the programme may not be delivering the expected results.

“If you want to do any assessment, I will urge the minister to take my constituency, for example. Actually, the programme is not in existence in my constituency,” he said.

He further claimed that in some cases beneficiaries received as few as two birds, raising questions about the scale and impact of the intervention.

“We also received two birds, and some of them [did not survive]. So the success rate, I will tell you, is so low,” he said.

Although his remarks suggested challenges with survival and distribution under the programme, Dr Opoku’s central argument was that the government should not move ahead with the next phase without first taking stock of the lessons from the first one.

He described the review as necessary to identify what worked, what failed and what adjustments are needed to improve outcomes in subsequent phases.

“My humble plea is that they should do a comprehensive review and address the challenges we faced in the first phase before we roll out the second phase,” he said.