The National Democratic Congress (NDC) presidential candidate, John Dramani Mahama, has declared that if elected in December, he will bring back the Zuarungu Meat Factory.
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah established the GIHOC Zuarungu Meat Product Company Limited in 1965 to manufacture canned beef for both local and international consumption.
However, because of poor management, it was shut down in 1995 after thirty years of operation.
Ghana is 90% dependent on imports of meat, hence it is predicted that the country will run out of chicken in five days and beef in one week if frozen meat importers close their doors.
Meat is one of the main causes of the pressure on the local currency from exchange rates, with an annual import of 2.4 billion dollars, or about 243 thousand metric tons.
Unfortunately, thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in revenue are anticipated to be lost along the supply chain from the farm gate to the processing floors to the sales outlets, which goes to Burkina Faso, Niger, South America, and Europe, Ghana’s main suppliers of meat imports.
John Mahama said he will resurrect the nation to run on a 24-hour economy in order to ensure that many young people in the region have work in order to avoid the difficulty.
“When we come to office in 2025, it’s about jobs, jobs and jobs. And that is why we are advocating the 24-hour economy. When I was doing the ‘Building Ghana Tour’, I promised Zuarungu Naba and all the chiefs here, that one of our priorities when we come back, will be to revive Kwame Nkrumah’s Zuarungu Meat Factory. And when we revive the meat factory, it will work 24 hours so that all the youth here will get work to do,” he noted.
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com/Joseph Asare
