Former Deputy Ashanti Regional Minister and member of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) communications team, Joseph Yammin has said many Ghanaians, for their inability to afford meat in recent times, have been forced to become vegetarians, MyNewsGh.com reports.

Though he didn’t give the source of the information to substantiate his claim, he blamed the phenomenon on what he said is the mismanagement of the economy by the Akufo-Addo administration.

He was contributing to discussions on the fallouts of the recent Afrobarometre report on Kumasi-based Angel FM monitored by MyNewsGh.com on Friday when he made the claim.

“The ‘mayanka’ (abattoir) used to slaughter 300 cattle a day, but today it is unable to slaughter even 150; people cannot buy meat to eat; Ghanaians are now turning vegetarians under Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, not because they want to be vegetarians, but it’s because they cannot afford to buy meat”, he told sit in host, Nana Kwame Agyei Bohyen on Angel In The Morning.

A new afrobarometre survey by the Centre of Democratic Development (CDD) shows the sharp decline in the approval ratings of some Ghanaians on the indicators of the current government’s performance on the economy.

Key findings in the survey suggest that six out of 10 Ghanaians (59%) believe the country is “going in the wrong direction.” The fraction of respondents who believe the country is “going in the right direction” dropped by 15 percentage points from 2017 to 35%.

Only 30% of Ghanaians describe the country’s economic conditions as “fairly good” or “very good”, a slight decline from 2017’s record of 35%.

It was on this backdrop that the former Deputy Sports Minister said that, “today when you go to the chop bars, people are eating fufu with just egg; when you go there, you will see people mashing boiled eggs into ground paper just to give their soups a taste of some protein. People are struggling; they can’t afford to buy meat”.

Though he says there is an abundance of staples like plantain and cassava due to the “rains conjured by Nana Akufo Addo”, there is an alarming need for meat by Ghanaian families to augment their carbohydrate-laden meals.

Government has however described the Afrobarometre survey as a positive feedback that shall inform its plans and programmes going forward.