‘No livestock card sans personal verification’

Rs9b set aside for livestock sector developmental programmes

LAHORE:

Provincial Minister for Agriculture and Livestock Syed Ashiq Hussain Karmani on Thursday stressed ensuring personal verification of farmers in every village to certify the livestock cards on first come, first serve basis.

The minister expressed these views while chairing a meeting to review progress on approved initiatives in the livestock sector.

Secretary Livestock Punjab, Masood Anwar gave a detailed briefing on the current status of initiatives including livestock cards, foot and mouth disease control programme.

The minister directed Punjab IT Board to prepare a dashboard for real-time information on timelines of all programmes and other matters.

He added that active surveillance and random sampling were being conducted under the foot and mouth disease control programme.

While addressing the meeting the agriculture minister said Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif had allocated Rs9 billion for the developmental programmes of the livestock sector in the fiscal year 2024-25.

He said that “new era of development would be initiated while implementing on this package”.

Punjab Livestock Secretary Masood Anwar said that in the next two years, from 40,000 to 80,000 livestock farmers would be provided Rs2 billion through Punjab CM livestock card, Rs7.5 billion for foot and mouth disease control programme and Rs2 billion for the programme of transferring Livestock assets to rural women in the coming two-year.