The Municipal Chief Executive of Asante Akyem North in the Ashanti Region, Francis Oti Boateng, has said almost half of the over 45,000 cattle that invaded Agogo and its surrounding areas have been taken out of the area.<\/p>\n
He attributed the success to the diligence of government’s task-force known as Operation Cowleg.<\/p>\n
A combined team of police and military personnel are currently in the Municipality to evict the herdsmen and their cattle.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”HGqjPOEf7lpIVmhOY1Q8GkkjEzbomvEu”]Speaking to Citi News<\/strong> on the work of the task-force, Francis Oti Boateng said they have recorded some progress in the last few weeks.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a huge progress that we are making, but until we see no cattle on our land, I cannot say that we\u2019ve won the fight. But I can tell that we estimated over 45,000 cattle on our land, and I can tell that at the moment almost half of them are gone, and we are making a lot of progress at the moment,\u201d the DCE added.<\/p>\n Whiles majority of the cattle were taken out unharmed, there are reports that nearly 2000 of them were killed.<\/p>\n Background<\/strong><\/p>\n Following complaints of alleged atrocities being committed by nomadic herdsmen and the destruction of farms in Agogo in the Ashanti Region and parts of the Eastern Region, government re-launched Operation Cow leg which comprised police and military personnel tasked to flush out the herders and their cattle from those areas.<\/p>\n In Agogo, four security personnel including three military officers and a police officer, who had been deployed to the area to evict the herdsmen,\u00a0were shot<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and injured by an unknown assailant following the renewed government efforts to address the long-standing conflict.<\/p>\n There were reports of herdsmen fleeing the area<\/a><\/strong> amid complaints of the wanton killing of cattle by the task-force.<\/p>\n A cattle owner in Agogo, who spoke to Citi News<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/strong>said he lost over 70<\/a><\/strong> of his cattle to the task-force, and he\u00a0had to beg the government\u00a0to give him more time to move all his livestock from the area.<\/p>\n