ISLAMABAD, July 5: The federal food ministry has started consultations with provinces to devise a plan to fight and control bird flu with World Bank’s aid.

The avian influenza is estimated to have caused losses of over Rs10 billion to Pakistan’s poultry industry since March this year.

Official sources said the government wanted up to $25 million soft-term funding jointly by the WB and the Asian Development Bank. However, the ADB showed its unwillingness to provide money for such a project and told the federal ministry of food, agricultural and livestock (Minfal) that it was a responsibility of the government to deal with the problem from its own resources.

When contacted, Minfal’s animal husbandry commissioner Dr Mohammad Afzal told Dawn that ministry had hired two experts to hold consultations with provincial livestock and dairy departments on preparation of a national plan to be funded by the WB and the experts were collecting data.

“A delegation of the WB has met Minfal officials and asked them to come up with a plan according to the requirements of the provinces to handle bird flu issue in future. The plan is estimated to cost up to $25million,” Dr Afzal said.

Official sources said that Minfal was trying to persuade the WB to fund the project through grant and not through loan because the country hit by last year’s quake badly needed help of the institutions like the WB. However, the bank wanted to provide only loan for the project and was of the view that the international community and financial institutions had already pledged massive funding for quake-hit areas and that flu crisis had nothing to do with the natural calamity. “That’s why an agreement on the nature of assistance could be delayed,” they said.

The country’s poultry industry is already demanding compensation from the government and has made claim of Rs10 billion losses only in the first three months of the latest bird flu crisis. The poultry association is of the view that the relief announced by the government in the budget 2006-07 was insufficient to rehabilitate the industry. It claims that the government failed to compensate the industry when bird flu first hit Pakistan about four years ago.

The officials said that the government was in no position to fund the plan but Dr Afzal said that it was possible that the government funded the national plan from its own resources instead of seeking funds from the WB.

He said the cost of the project would include expenses on monitoring of birds, diagnosis, mass awareness campaign, training programmes, preparation of vaccine locally and proper legislation. He said making new and amending existing laws was need of the hour but “we don’t know who will check a farmer if he does not report avian flu in his farm to the government authorities”.

Dr Afzal said legislation was also needed to check movement of the bird flu virus and make poultry farm owners and people involved in chicken business follow certain codes.