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The outbreak, which started in Khargram block in Murshidabad, has already spread to the neighbouring Kandhi block. The villagers have demanded an increase in compensation and alleged that they are yet to receive aid for the 2008 outbreak.
These include villagers from Borowan, Mahisar, Baliya, Kirtipur, Parulia, Khargram and Jaipur.
As culling teams visited Borowan on Tuesday, locals stopped them from taking away their hens and ducks. Despite police escorts, the teams could not enter the villages. There are 59 culling teams working in the area, most of whom have been given police escorts.
District Magistrate Perwez Ahmed Siddiqui said: “People are not handing over their domestic poultry, be it hens or ducks. They fail to realise that all their birds will die and there is a chance of human infection. They are not allowing the culling teams to work. We are conducting awareness camps and I am speaking to them.”
“The compensation rate has been fixed by the Centre and we cannot change it. There were several anomalies in distributing compensation to households in these villages and we are trying to rectify it,” he added. For the first time, culling has been initiated within two hours of confirmation and payment made within 48 hours, said Siddiqui.
Along with Siddiqui, state Animal Resource Development Minister Narayan Biswas have visited Khargram.
Bird flu was confirmed in Nagar and Hajarbati in Khargram on January 14. At that point in time, the state government had earmarked 60,000 birds to be culled. Meanwhile, the Avian Influenza spread to new areas and affected Kandhi — the block bordering Khargram. Though seven days have passed, only a little over 35,000 birds have been culled.
Fearing a spread of H5N1 virus outside Murshidabad, the district administration has sealed its border with neighbouring Birbhum. Vehicles leaving Khargram and Kandhi are being checked by special teams. Khargram and surrounding Murshidabad were the worst-affected areas when bird flu broke out in January 2008.
The state had incurred a loss of Rs 500 crore and nearly 40 lakh birds had to be culled. As many as 13 districts of the state were hit. Khargram in Murshidabad borders Margram in Birbhum — the initiation point for the 2008 outbreak.
“Today, we have proposed to the state government that the compensation amount be hiked from Rs 50 for all birds to Rs 100 for hens and Rs 150 for ducks,” said Abul Kasem, Panchayat Samity Sabhapati in Khargram.
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Good move by ordinary people. These viral infections need to be viewed with great amount of suspicion, as also should the government initiatives. Is it to help the corporate poultry that culling is done on indigenous species ? Aren't these species already endangered ? Why are animal-bird lovers silent to this atrocities ? Are birds only to be reared to train the local population to seek poultry-flesh as a food substitute ? The state should refrain from entering civil life on behalf of markets. It should uphold its own dignity, rather than reducing itself to a intermediary in a buyer-seller environment which is the least primitive cultural form of human life. Instead of augmenting indigenous species by facilitating movement of its eggs for hatching and rearing in villages and hamlets, the state appears to be on a reverse drive. Wherever poultry farming is intervening with this indigenous species, these commercial activities should be banned completely. Bird ecology is important too.