Via Kangla Online, an editorial from the Imphal Free Press: Bird Flu Confusion. Excerpt, re-paragraphed:
The bird flu epidemic has officially been declared over for a fortnight now. The day the declaration was made on August 14, newspapers in even Imphal carried pictures of people relishing free chicken meals distributed at the veterinary and animal husbandry department office complex courtesy some poultry farmers in celebration of the end of what was a big business threat to them all.
Official notification on the day also announced that poultry meat brought in from outside the five-kilometre culling zone with epicentre at Thangmeiband, would be allowed to be sold.
And yet, a few days ago, poultry meat centres in and around Imphal were hauled up by the police for selling the meat. What exactly is going on?
True there were some fine prints which said among others that only dressed chicken meat and not live fowls could be brought in. There was also another clause forbidding sale of eggs unless they are from outside of the culling zones. Just how it was to be determined eggs from outside Imphal and those from Imphal was however not explained.
But fine prints and sub-texts and footnotes are read only by researchers and avid followers of any particular news event, not by ordinary folks, to which class a majority belong. So when the police hauled up the poultry meat vendors the other day, it was in all respect a case of undue harassment and not law keeping.
Should it not have been obligatory on the part of the government to ensure that the message of the latest status and orders regarding the matter reach the public? Should not the campaign against the dreaded flu have included a post-culling publicity to brief ordinary folks of the dos and don’ts until the threat of the virus has been totally eliminated? Should this campaign not have been a little more sustained than a simple press release to the media for a single day?
The government has a full-fledged publicity department, so why could it not have been pressed into service to do some field publicity? Some poster campaigns as well as attractive and visible advertisements could have also been used to forward such a campaign.
