Animal Husbandry Minister Punjab Balbir Singh Sidhu today said that keeping in view the rising trend of dog keeping in urban areas, the state government would soon set up specialized Pet Clinics in all the major cities.Interacting with the media persons here today during his visit to the Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory here today, the Minister said that trend of cattle rearing in cities has witnessed a steep fall due to varied reasons. However, he said that on the contrary the trend of keeping dogs or pets has increased a lot. So Mr. Sidhu said that in order to ensure quality health services to pets these clinics would play an instrumental role.Replying to another query, the Minister said that as the department was grappling with shortage of 350-400 veterinary Inspectors and Doctors, so the state government has decided that 106 veterinary inspectors would be recruited soon. Likewise, he said that the process of recruiting veterinary Doctors would also be started in a phased manner. Mr. Sidhu also said that the proposal to upgrade infrastructure in all the Veterinary hospitals would also be started very soon.The Minister said that all the poly clinics in the districts would also be well equipped with the state of the art infrastructure. He said that proper medicines would be made available in all the poly clinics and the shortage if any would have to be displayed on the boards.
Meanwhile, the Minister also reviewed the working of the RDDL and inspected the work in the laboratories. He said that the state government would soon take up the matter of upgrading this laboratory, which caters to state of Punjab, Jammu and Kahmir, Haryana, Himachal, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh, at part with the one in Bhopal at a cost of around Rs 26 crore. Mr. Sidhu also asked the officers to encourage farmers to allied farming activities like Animal Husbandry as it was far more remunerative. He said that it was a high time to adopt dairy and other allied farming professions because the agriculture has already reached a point of saturation and was unable to make both ends of the farmers meet in view of high cost of agriculture inputs and diminishing returns.Earlier, welcoming the Minister Director Animal Husbandry Dr. Amarjeet Singh apprised him about the functioning of the RDDL. He also assured the Minister that department would make whole hearted efforts to ensure that farmers were benefitted from program of the state government.On the occasion, Officer on Special Duty to Minister Mr. Harkesh Sharma, Joint Director Animal Husbandry Mr. Mohinder Pal, Deputy Directors Mr. Iqbal Singh and Mr. Satbir Singh Bajwa, Congress leader Mr. Bhupinder Singh Saini and others were also present.