|
Eleven northern regions have no veterinary staff
2008-01-25 08:55:58
By Adam Ihucha, Arusha
Northern regions, renown for having large numbers of livestock, are currently facing a critical shortage of veterinary officers.
The livestock population is therefore at risk in the wake of the spread of trans-boundary animal diseases, an expert has said.
The northern zone Veterinary Investigation Centre Officer in charge, Dr. Emmanuel Swai, told the Parliamentary Committee on Land and Agriculture that 11 districts in the area had done without any veterinary officers for years now.
The zone, comprising of Kilimanjaro, Tanga, Manyara and Arusha regions, has only 17 veterinary officers, making it difficult to control the spread of trans-boundary diseases.
The zone needs at least 28 district veterinary officers.
``District veterinary officers are legally mandated to enforce all government directives in their areas. It is quite difficult to control the spread of animal diseases such as Rift Valley Fever without having enough such officers,`` Dr. Swai told the legislators.
Dr Swai said Pangani, Kilindi, Korogwe, Mwanga and Rombo districts had no veterinary officers.
Other districts which suffer the same fate are Ngorongoro, Karatu, Babati, Kiteto and Mbulu.
The Minister for Livestock Development, Anthony Diallo said the shortage of veterinary officers in the northern zone was a result of the government`s move to cease employment of staff some 12 years ago.
He assured the parliamentary committee that plans were underway to employ more veterinary officers who would be dispatched to the respective districts.
The Chairperson of the Committee, Hilda Ngoye, said the shortage of district veterinary officers could negatively impact on the livestock industry`s contribution to national economic growth.
She said the abundance of livestock was gold on the earth`s surface and, if extracted, could emancipate nearly eight million pastoralists from their current state of dire poverty to a promised land of riches and prosperity.
Recent figures indicate that Tanzania has 18.8 million head of cattle, 13.5 million goats, 3.6 million sheep, 53 million chickens and 1.37 million pigs, providing livelihood to over eight million people in total.
Despite these impressive figures, however, the livestock sector’s contribution to nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is merely four percent.
Ngoye said the livestock industry was tasked to guarantee food security and catapult 50 percent of people currently living under one dollar a day to economic prosperity.
Economists say the industry`s low contribution to the GDP is attributed to low genetic potential of the indigenous stock in some production parameters such as meat, milk and eggs.
However, there has been a positive trend in production of livestock products in recent years.
For instance, in the past year, milk production had swelled modestly from 1.41 billion litres in 2005/6 to 1.43 billion litres in 2006/7.
Recent available data shows that hides and skins worth 16.2 bn/- were exported in 2006/7 compared to 7.5 bn/-worth of hides and skins in 2005/6.
|
