Agri Forum Pakistan (AFP) Chairman Mohammad Ibrahim Mughal has criticised the performance of the departments working for increasing milk and meat production in the Punjab province. He alleged that millions of rupees allocated for these sectors by the government are going waste. ‘Departments and organisations working for increasing milk and meat production have neither brought any practical innovation in this sector nor they are providing any appropriate guidance to the livestock farmers due to which average milk production of per animal per day is stagnant at 4 litres a day for the last 10 years,’ Mughal said while talking to media persons here on Tuesday.
Agri Forum Chairman said that companies were buying milk from livestock farmers at the rate of Rs 27 to 37 per litre and selling it at Rs 85 per litre after extracting cream from this milk thus exploiting the consumers. He said that Dairy Development Board was also busy in feathering their own nest instead of helping the livestock farmers or rendering any solid service to the livestock sector. He regretted that the livestock farmers were producing 35 billion litres of milk per year in the country but only less then 2 billion litres was being processed.
He said milk packing companies were fleecing the consumers by selling them milk at Rs 85 per litre after extracting cream from it thus earning 100 to 200 percent profit. The government was also playing the role of silent spectator in exploitation of consumers, he alleged. Mughal was of the view that national milk production could be enhanced to 50 billion litres per annum by promoting Neeli-Ravi and Sahiwal species of cows in the country and country could export milk worth Rs 150 billion too. He urged the government to immediately ban whitener being imported in the country in the name of ‘dry milk’ which was causing harm to the health of consumers. He said organisations which were selling this whitener should be forced to prepare dry milk from milk being produced in the country, which would be cheaper and of quality, he observed.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2012
