The deputy Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Hon. Dr. Abu Abu Bakarr Karim has said on Thursday June 19 2020, that Sierra Leone faces major challenges in delivering health services for animals.
The deputy Minister of Agriculture made the remark during the official handing over of the revised para-veterinary curriculum to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry title: ‘Agriculture and Food Security’ at the Ministry’s conference hall, at Youyi building, in Freetown.
Minister Karim said that the Ministry lacks trained personnel to provide animal health delivery services in the country, adding that the personnel are few and the infrastructure needed to train and maintain these personnel are severely lacking. “For the whole country, there are only two trained and qualified veterinary doctors in service, of which one is approaching retirement. These doctors have tried to uphold the Livestock Division of the Ministry for decades. The lack of a succession plan poses severe risks for the whole sector,” Dr. Karim revealed.
He further explained that before the outbreak of the war in 1991, the Livestock Division had a Training Centre at Teko, in Makeni which gave Certificate training to animal health workers and on animal production. He added that those technicians effectively served the Ministry and provided livestock and veterinary services to farmers all over the Country, but that centre was destroyed during the war, and brought government-led training of middle-level veterinary officers largely to a halt, consequently reducing the number of trained and active staff in the field significantly.
“This is also partly due to retirements, deaths and non-replacement of trained personnel,” he continued.
“Another institution that provided identical training services to MAF staff was the Certificate Training Centre (CTC), which later became the National Agricultural Training Centre (NATC), supported by MAF, and was later handed over to Njala due to financial constraint,” Karim further recalled.
He said that it is unfortunate that all institutions and infrastructure which were geared towards veterinary training, which had existed before the war (1991), have been destroyed, noting that the few existing livestock training programs have not been able to train para veterinary professionals that meet the changing demands of the market. “Through the BAFS project, attempts are being made to salvage this situation,” he asserted.
He pointed out that the Ministry of Agriculture is collaborating with the Ministry of Tertiary Education, partner organizations like Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Njala University and other tertiary institutions, to offer courses in animal health.
22/6/2020. ISSUE NO.:7850