Sindh Minister Livestock and Fisheries Engineer Abdul Bari Pitafi has said that Sindh government is keen to improve the productivity and develop market access to develop dairy value chain activity to improve economic status of small and medium livestock farmers and also working to strengthening public sector institutions to enhance the enabling environment for sustained sartorial growth. This, he said, while reviewing the Sindh Agriculture Growth project-Livestock assisted by World Bank implemented through Livestock & Fisheries Department Government of Sindh. He said that through this project 153 milk potential villages are identified and communities have been organized into 153 milk producer groups (MPGs) in 10 project targeted districts, where Out of 153 MPGs, 104 MPGs have been facilitated with newly constructed chiller rooms and milk chillers along with allied equipment, besides that more 49 chiller rooms are in bidding process. So that the small and the medium livestock farmers got the opportunity to sell milk at optimum price due to bulk volume of collected milk at one place and also developed market linkage which minimized the transportation expenses. With the help of these chillers now milk is being collected hygienically, tested electronically and paid as per quality. Due to electronic milk testing adulteration trend of milk is now reduced. The minister further said that due to capacity building of farmers and extensive animal health service (M&E report 2019), animal milk production increased upto 28.4%. Through this project animal health services are been provided to more than 4 lakh 50 thousand animals in project targeted villages. The beneficiaries of this project intervention are approximately 20,000 in which more than 8,000 females and more than 11,700 males are included
