Brong-Ahafo Regional Minister, Mr Ernest Akubour Debrah, has inaugurated a 14-member Regional Wildfire Prevention Control Committee in Sunyani and appealed to members to be involved in the committee's activities.

He said the region achieved 70 percent in its bushfire prevention campaign last year when the committee had not been put in place.

"With the official inauguration of the committee members should try and help the region to leap in its bushfire prevention control to 80 percent.''

Mr Debrah recalled the dense forest cover of Brong-Ahafo Region 30 years ago and expressed regret that "the position is not the same at present" and urged members of the committee to work hard towards the realization of the campaign's aims and objectives.

He said two percent of the region's agricultural produce got destroyed annually through bushfires and expressed satisfaction with the setting up of the committee.

Mr Debrah said the region's success in last year's campaign that shot it to the first place at the national level was one single thing that had encouraged him as Regional Minister.

He noted the enormous responsibility of the Committee members and expressed the hope that they would work harder to achieve the ultimate.

Mr Joseph Boakye, Assistant Regional Manager of Forest Services Division, said the committee was the brainchild of the Wildfire Management Project in the transition zone of Ghana.

The project, he said, was being implemented in Brong Ahafo, Ashanti and Eastern regions and jointly sponsored by the Royal Netherlands Government and the Government of Ghana.

Apart from hunting, agricultural activities and charcoal production as the main causes of wildfires, logging and indiscriminate tree felling have seriously increased the fire sensitivity and impact of fires in the region, he said.

He cautioned that "if no answer is found to the continuing degradation of the vegetation cover in the region, we stand the real risk of desertification".

He said the project would be implemented over a 10-year period covering an initiation phase of two years, acceleration phase of four years and institutionalisation phase of four years.

Nana Bosoma Asor Nkrawiri 11, Omanhene of Sunyani Traditional Area and Chairman of the Committee, reminded his colleagues of the task ahead and asked them to do their best to make the region maintain its enviable national record of being first in last year's bushfire prevention control campaign.