The provincial government has transferred an official of the livestock department from Swabi to Mardan as punishment for allegedly disclosing that H5N1 strain of bird flu influenza had been detected in a poultry farm of the district, sources told Dawn. They claimed that on the advice of a local MPA, who favoured the poultry farm owners, Basic Livestock Officer Mohammad Ibrahim was made a scapegoat for revealing the information and "transferred within a day as the process usually takes a month'.