July 13, 2010

 

Pakistani government to sell its poultry farms

The Punjab government has decided to sell all its poultry farms in southern Punjab, which were established some 25 years ago, to overcome financial crisis.

 

According to sources, the government had established three huge poultry farms at the divisional level in Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Bahawalpur while small poultry farms were also set up in Bahawalnagar and Mianwali. The remaining two big poultry farms were established in Sargodha and Dina while another at Poultry Research Center in Rawalpindi and small farms were set up in Gujrat and Attock. These poultry farms were established in remote areas of the province with the aim to provide semi-indigenous and crossbred units of birds amid the endangered status of the rural poultry.

 

Poultry experts says that the decision of the Punjab government will discourage the development of the poultry sector as these areas are the strong hubs of indigenous poultry breeds and the main source of income, particularly for the womenfolk in rural areas.

 

The authorities concerned informed the staff of these poultry farms about the decision in a meeting held on July 6 in Rawalpindi.

 

The sources said the minimum and maximum rates of these state assets have been assessed by the excise and revenue departments and all record of government poultry farms has also been furnished to the provincial livestock and dairy development department and onward to the authority concerned.

 

Poultry expert Dr Rafique Mastoi said that heavy earning was not expected through the sale of these poultry farms as most of these were located out of cities.

 

Basically, he said the sale would have minus impact on the income of the families dependent on the sale and purchase of the poultry.

 

According to him, small farmers purchased the day-old birds on low rates from these government poultry farms and kept them till the egg production that was supplied in the open market while birds were then sold for the meat purpose as the production drops. He added that the production of eggs from the domestic poultry units in Dera Ghazi Khan, Rajanpur, Layyah, Multan, Bahawalpur and Muzaffargarh were supplied to Sindh, Balochistan and other parts of the country round the year.

 

Although the decision of the government would not be helpful for the provincial government to overcome its ongoing financial crisis, Dr Mastoi said it would result in a heavy loss to the farming community.

 

He said the women empowerment scheme had been launched which was providing units of these birds free of cost to the needy and deserving women after these were being purchased from poultry farms by the government to help the rural community.

 

"Besides this, all the women from rural areas were being trained on technical grounds with the management techniques to meet the challenges in case of diseases or outbreak so that they could get better productivity," he added.

 

The Director of Poultry Research Institute, Rawalpindi, Habibullah was not available for comment while senior research engineer Ashraf Anjum said the revenue record of these poultry farms had been provided to the higher authorities on their demand.