Faculty members of veterinary colleges should ensure highest quality in their skill development training programmes meant for poultry and dairy farmers so as to enable the trainees to become successful entrepreneurs, S. Vijayakumar, Secretary, Department of Animal Husbandry, has said.
Addressing the inauguration of skill development programme for poultry farmers at Veterinary College and Research Institute, Ramaiyanpatti, on Saturday, Dr. Vijayakumar said the State Government, with the objective of imparting the skills required for successfully running any industry, established a separate body in 2011 and allotted adequate funds for conducting training and skill development programmes for the aspirants.
Those who underwent this training and skill development programmes either became entrepreneurs or employable in their industry, especially in the dairy and poultry units.
“Moreover, these trained workforce become experts in preventing or containing the diseases threatening the poultry birds and dairy animals. When avian influenza threatened Telengana and Kerala recently, no such incident happened in Tamil Nadu because of the veterinarians and the skilled workforce who had undergone skill development training programme being offered by the TANUVAS. Had it spread to Tamil Nadu, it would have caused huge loss to our farmers as culling becomes inevitable,” Dr. Vijayakumar noted.
He said the State Government was spending Rs. 6,000 per head for imparting skill development training to each participant and urged the faculty members of the veterinary colleges to ensure quality in the programmes they were conducting.
The Secretary released a CD on the dairy mineral mixture of TANUVAS which is being given to milch animals to increase lactation and handed over country chicks hatched at VC and RI’s Ramaiyanpatti complex hatchery to a few farmers.
He also released the training module handbook meant for the dairy and poultry farmers.
