The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on Thursday said it is not happy with the rampant encroachment of almost all of its lands. It said the encroachment posed serious threats to the mandates of the CSIR and called on the Government to intervene in order not to sacrifice science and technology on the altar of affordable housing.
The CSIR was established by Act 521 of 1996 to ensure that science and technology, which are the main engines of growth, were elevated to their rightful places.Professor Robert Kingsford-Adabor, the Chairman of the Council of the CSIR, at a news conference in Accra, said virtually all the Council’s lands, including the Head Office and the 13 institutes all over the country, meant for research work, had been encroached by developers in concert with government officials and appointees.
He said land secured by the Government for CSIR research activities at Pokuase, years ago, was under serious threat as a large acreage had been destroyed.Prof. Kingsford-Adabor accused the Ga West Municipal Assembly and Ministry of Works and Housing for the encroachment on the said lands under the pretext of constructing affordable housing units.
“The encroachers have succeeded in destroying planting materials including rare species of specially cultivated forage. The cost of destruction is more than two million dollars. As we speak now, cattle belonging to CSIR Animal Research Institute have no shelter as their kraals have been demolished by the bulldozers operating on the land,” he said.
Prof. Kingsford-Adabor said when staff of CSIR went to ascertain the extent of destruction on the land, they were brutalized by armed men who claimed to be acting per the instructions from higher circles.
He said as at now some members of staff assaulted were seeking medical treatment.“Lives of individuals, especially our Security Coordinator, are being threatened because the site at Pokuase has become a 24-hour unprecedented sand winning area”.
He said crisis seemed to be looming as the Council’s staff would not be intimidated when pursuing a laudable cause of protecting land lawfully acquired for research purposes. The Chairman of the Council noted that those lands were not lying fallow as some might think but are being used for the conservation of the N’dama cattle, which had a tolerant gene against the trypanosomosis disease plaguing cattle in the tropics.
The station is the only sub-station that hosts pasture museum in Ghana and currently it is being used in collaboration with the Global Research Alliance for the study of carbon sequestration under cultivated pasture.
Prof. Kingsford-Adabor said pastures for those studies should not be less than six years old, meanwhile, the fields that had been destroyed were 40 years old and were very suitable for those studies. The implication of the studies, he said, was to find ways to mitigate the effects of climate change while at the same time improving livestock production.
“These fields were to provide planting materials to the National Committee on Cattle Ranching set up by the President to find a solution to the cattle herders - crop farmer conflicts plaguing the West African Sub-region”. “Recently Biotechnology and Nuclear Agricultural Research Institute of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission had to depend on the CSIR – Animal Research Institute - for pasture research materials to enable them to meet their contractual agreement with their partners in Kenya on one of their tissue culture research programmes”.
The station is equally carrying out research into poultry, specifically domestic chicken, ducks and turkeys, grass cutters, sheep and goats as well as cattle, and it is currently in collaboration with Agri-food Canada in undertaking trials for improved pasture materials such as Alfalfa, fenogric, cicer milk vetch, orchard grass and perennial rye grass for livestock.