HYDERABAD: Japanese diplomat Nozomu Aoki has said that his government would continue its technical support in livestock sector in Pakistan on the basis of results of the ongoing cooperation.
He was speaking to the media at the end of a day-long inspection of Japan-funded projects in Sindh.
The projects included a school for deaf children, livestock farms and facilities and other schemes.
The livestock sector has a financial assistance of Rs838 million from Japan.
A buffalo calf salvation centre was set up in Hyderabad’s directorate of Sindh livestock department. This will be replicated by other organisations in Sindh.
Under this programme 5,000 livestock farmers are to benefit in terms of technological training in eight different areas of livestock management for improved practices.
The Sindh government is also pitching in Rs227m in this project, which would end in June 2020.
The Japanese financial assistance was used in technology transfer, transportation and capacity building of livestock farmers to ensure growth of buffaloes and milk production.
“Pakistan is a huge country with many needs, that’s why Japanese government is supporting its livestock sector,” the diplomat said while answering a question. He said support through Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) was supporting Pakistan government in different sectors. He said that successful results were seen in livestock project and based on research and results of the project such support would continue in future.
He said that some policy issues at governmental level needed to be addressed to change mindset of farmers.
He said that sanitation was an important area farmers needed to pay heed to. He said that JICA had provided technical knowledge and it yielded good results.
JICA is supporting farmers with provision of calf to livestock farmers so that they could improve their livestock practices and increase milk production.
Pilot farmers were identified and they were provided with two female calves each in order to increase number of buffaloes for getting more per-animal milk production amid improved feed formula identified in the project with Japanese experts’ advice. Journalists also met a pilot farmer, Pahlaj Kohli, in Saleh Dal village, Hyderabad rural taluka.
Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2019
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