KARACHI, Jan 23: An amount of Rs40 million invested by the Sindh government to revive the Karachi Milk Plant has failed to make even one unit of the plant fully operational.
All that has been achieved so far out of the investment is the restoration of the KMP's pasteurization unit and that, too, at lesser than its actual capacity. Major among the other jobs required to be done include is renovation of the plant's existing building.
The provincial government had re launched this project as a joint venture with the Idara-i-Kisan which had been running similar plants in Lahore and Islamabad successfully.
In view of its capability and experience, the Idara was given full control of financial and administrative matters of the plant. However, some other factors, including non-implementation of the institution's work plan, contributed to the failure of this venture.
The government is still not ready to scrap the project owing to the fact that the demand of processed milk, butter, curd and other such products in Karachi is always higher than the total production in the city and input from other parts of the province.
The total requirement is met through the dairy supplies from Punjab. The authorities, therefore, are now considering a proposal that the plant be leased out or moved to some other place in the province.
The Karachi Milk Plant had been established in 1965 with the assistance of Unicef, Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Programme and the Government of New Zealand.
It has a pasteurization capacity of 25,000 litres of milk within an eight-hour shift with total dairy produce of 75,000 litres. After 15 years, the Sindh government closed down the plant on Jan 10, 1980 citing its non-satisfactory performance.
Later, on the instructions of Sindh governor, a joint venture was worked out for its revival and the PC-1 of the project was prepared under the Indus Dairy Development Project. The approved estimated cost was Rs50 million. The government undertook to invest Rs40 million and the rest was pledged by the Idara-i-Kisan.
Out of the government's funds, Rs25 million were spent on procuring a milk powder plant, Rs4.2 million on the repairing of the existing plant and its equipment, and Rs0.8 million under the head of pre-cost. The remaining amount of Rs10 million was released to the livestock and fisheries department for extension service in the project area.
The per day milk production in the project area - consisting Hyderabad, Thatta, Badin, Mirpurkhas and Sanghar districts - is estimated to be around 7.9 million litres (2.5 million litres of cow milk and 5.4 million litres of buffalo milk).
An agreement for the joint venture was signed on April 24, 2002 under which the Idara was given the responsibilities of renovating and operating the plant, installing a powder milk plant and renovating the existing milk chilling unit at Pathan Colony, Deh Bijor, in Thatta district.
Besides, it was entrusted with the establishment of two additional chilling units, one in Digri and the other in Khipro. The KMP's pasteurization unit was made functional on Nov 15, 2002 but rest of the work schedule could not be observed for want of the required inputs from the Idara.
A meeting of the plant's stakeholders was held on May 3, 2003 to discuss the situation and it was decided that the Idara would appoint field staff and arrange for the procurement of milk from the identified centres immediately. Besides, the Idara pledged to provide relevant publicity material and sign boards meant to be affixed at milk collection points.
The institution was given two-month time to renovate the chilling unit in Thatta and establish two other such units as provided in the agreement for the joint venture.
It was also decided that after achieving the full capacity production from the chilling units, a powder plant would be installed by the Idara within three months.
Had the decisions been implemented, the plant could have delivered a considerably better production, but the present situation shows that nothing has changed over the past one-and-a-half years.
The Livestock department, whose was supposed to ensure the supply of 0.1 million to one million litres of milk per day from the project area, also could not make it due to the absence of skilled staff, required equipment and a proper schedule of milk collection. All these facilities were supposed to be provided by the Idara-i-Kisan.
