Chongwe livestock farmers appeal for quick epidemic alerts
Written by Millennium on April 5, 2019
LINDA SOKO TEMBO Writes
@SunZambian
A livestock farmer in Chongwe has appealed to the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries to hasten the dissemination of information on pests and disease outbreaks to enable farmers take control measures in time.
Mr Charles Zulu, a small scale farmer in the Kasenga resettlement area, complained that the farmers received information on the outbreaks late making them spend huge amounts of money on treating their livestock rather instead of taking prevention measures.
Mr Chanda said, “In most cases, warnings on disease outbreaks came late and we usually find ourselves more on the treatment side than on the preventive side.”
“Animal pest and disease control is the thing we need the Department of Fisheries to pay attention to. The information flow from the high offices down to the farmer on the ground sometimes is slow and never reaches us,” he said.
He said the livestock outreach personnel were few and hard to find in remote areas places and that it was therefore necessary for Veterinary department to ensure the farmers were quickly alerted on epidemics so that they do not have to travel all the way to town to access the services.
He complained that the livestock farmers in rural areas would most likely face a big challenge with water this year because of the poor rain pattern experienced this season and the high cost of drilling a borehole.
Mr Zulu appealed to government to come up with a deliberate policy to enable the small scale farmers have boreholes drilled at discounted rates.
“The water table is quiet low this year. I am not sure how our animals will survive,” he said.
