HYDERABAD, March 25: The Progressive Veterinarians Forum Sindh on Sunday organised a march, which started from Haider Chowk and ended at the press club, to press the government for accepting their demands.

The marchers, including a large number of veterinary doctors, also staged a sit-in on the press club road.

The forum leaders Dr Buxial Thalho, Dr Tauqeer, Dr Karim Bux Panhwar and Dr Mohammad Ishaque Memon said that the government had always neglected the livestock sector, which had great importance in the agrarian economy of the province.

They said that the president and the prime minister had been talking about developing the sector in their speeches but little practical steps had been done in this regard.

The province had only 350 veterinary doctors employed in livestock and poultry sector throughout the province. In other words there was only one doctor to look after 100,000 cattle while contrary to this India had one doctor for 16,000 cattle and Pakistani Punjab had one doctor for 50,000 animals, they said.

They demanded that the services of house job trainee doctors should be regularised and 1,500 jobless veterinary graduates should be employed in the livestock sector to end the shortage of doctors.

They demanded that the government should enforce in letter and spirit the service structure of veterinary doctors and make promotions and transfers in a transparent manner.

They strongly opposed plans to shift milk plant and veterinary hospitals to the district governments of Karachi and Hyderabad and vowed to resist the move.

They condemned the act of ransacking the Sindh Agriculture University (SAU) and demanded that the miscreants who were involved in it should be arrested without delay. The SAU’s faculty of animal husbandry should be provided latest facilities.

STPSF: Activists of Sindh Taraqqi-Pasand Students Federation (STPSF) staged a demonstration outside the press club against the arrest of Irfan Shaikh, the party’s Hyderabad district president.

STPSF leaders Syed Haider Shah, Khadim Abro and Asad Sindhi demanded immediate release of Irfan Shaikh and warned the central jail administration of serious consequences if it failed to provide facilities allowed under jail manual to Irfan Shaikh.