Poultry Industry Body Calls for Government Support
PAKISTAN - The chairman of the Pakistan Poultry Association (PPA) has called on the government to end planning rules that make it difficult and expensive to set up new poultry farms.PPA Chairman, Khalil Sattar, has said the poultry farming sector with about 30,000 poultry farms is the single largest rural job provider, engaging 1.5 million workers directly or indirectly, according to The News.
He was addressing the National Poultry and Food Expo 2011 Friday. Pleading for the government to support the cheapest source of animal protein in the country, he pointed out that during the last three years, food inflation was 74 per cent, according to official findings as reported in the daily media while that of poultry in the same period was only around 33 per cent.
He said that as a safety measure against the spread of disease in poultry stock, the PPA had been requesting the government to enact a law making it mandatory to have a distance between one poultry farm to the next, which was 1, 2 and 3km for broiler/commercial layer farm, parent stock farms and grandparent farms.
Recording his protest against the discrimination against poultry farmers in setting up their farms, he said the farm site plan approval fee was three rupees (PKR) per square foot, which was on a par with the industries which would have an investment of billions of rupees on a smaller constructed area whereas in the urban areas of Lahore for a luxurious bungalow, the site plan approval fee was PKR2 per square foot.
Poultry farmers are also required to pay a Malba Disposal Tax but there is zero arrangement of malba disposal while on the other hand, within the same area the agriculture sector pays zero taxes, he added. He said the poultry sector had provided millions of rupees in flood relief, earthquake rehabilitation and in rehabilitation of IDPs but regrettably no assistance had ever been provided to flood-affected or earthquake-affected poultry farmers though they suffered losses of millions of rupees.
Mr Sattar said that some 3,000 poultry farms were submerged in the last floods of July 2010 in the areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhuwa, Punjab and Sindh but all the relief funds were provided to agriculturists.
The News reported the Chairman of PPA saying that this callous treatment of poultry farming sector must come to an end and the government must embrace the poultry farming sector, which was dedicated to the socio-economic uplift of the country and providing top quality poultry products to the countrymen.