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Veterinary staff crunch leaves livestock in lurch
With more than 50 per cent posts of assistant directors, veterinary assistant surgeons, junior veterinary officers and livestock assistants lying vacant for many years, the veterinary services in rural areas have been hit severely in Mahbubnagar district.
Mahbubnagar: With more than 50 per cent posts of assistant directors, veterinary assistant surgeons, junior veterinary officers and livestock assistants lying vacant for many years, the veterinary services in rural areas have been hit severely in Mahbubnagar district.
“It is true that the Animal Husbandry Department in the district is facing shortage of staff. However, to oversee the operations in rural areas, assistant director level officers are appointed as in charge to two to three mandals. Because of this, the people may have been facing some problems in rural areas,” said Abedi, office manager at Animal Husbandry Department office in Mahbubnagar.
Particularly, the veterinary services in agency regions of Atchampeta, Amrabad, Nagarkurnool and Kollapur are said to be totally failed. There are no doctors in veterinary clinics and all works are being taken care of by unskilled manpower being hired on outsources basis. “Atchempeta and Ambrabad areas have the highest number of cattle in the district.
Therefore, the susceptibility of diseases among buffalos, cows, sheep and goat in our area is very high. The only veterinary hospital we have at Atchempeta has no regular doctor and it is manned by temporary outsourced employees. The in-charge assistant director is just seen once in 15 days and we have no one here to register our complaints,” said Ravinder, a dairy farm owner in Atchempeta.
According to the norms, there should be at least six assistant directors at each taluka level veterinary hospitals and at least three veterinary polyclinics should be there in the district. However, at present there is only one veterinary polyclinic at the district headquarters.
Though every mandal has a veterinary hospital and need to be manned by at least 2-3 veterinary assistant surgeons (VAS), majority of these posts are left vacant for the past few years. “At present, we need at least 68 veterinary assistant surgeons to oversee services in the district. Recently, the government announced filling up of 250 VAS posts and we are hopeful that the problems will be addressed very soon,” said Dr G Durgaiah, Joint Director, Animal Husbandry, Mahbubnagar.
Recently, the State government introduced mobile veterinary clinics one each in Nagarkurnool, Shadnagar and Mahbubnagar to provide healthcare services to livestock in rural areas. However, these clinics are also left non-functional due to delay in release of funds.
“As the mobile clinics are yet to come, we have hired veterinary mobile clinics from private players on temporary basis. But since the bills for these private mobile clinics are pending for the past three months, we are not able to provide these services in the rural areas,” informed an officials on condition of anonymity.
