HYDERABAD, May 16: District Nazim Kanwar Naveed Jamil announced on Tuesday that the city had emerged unhurt from bird flu, nevertheless the district government had been the first in the province to launch an awareness drive about the viral disease.

Mr Jamil said in a speech at a one-day seminar on “Avian influenza (bird flu) and bio-security measures” held at a local hotel that he had formed a task force with DCO as its head to chalk out precautionary measures against a possible outbreak of the disease.

As a first step all the 443 poultry farms operating in the district were listed and then 2000 blood samples were taken from the poultry and sent for examination to Karachi and Islamabad, he said.

The results of the tests though proved negative, the nazim told the seminar the district government had organized as part of its awareness drive.

As the second step, he said, the district would register all the poultry farms, issue them licenses and make it mandatory for the new entrepreneurs to get permission in writing from the district government prior to setting up poultry farms.

He said that the district would make it binding on poultry farming community to adopt precautionary measures in accordance with the WHO standards.

Mr Jamil said that the district government had offered 200 acres of land to establish a dairy colony in the city in a bid to improve socio-economic conditions of the rural population of the district.

He applauded the services of scientists at Sindh Poultry Vaccine Centre, Karachi for discovering a vaccine against H5N1.

Dr Baz Mohammad Junejo, secretary livestock and fisheries, who was chief guest, said that the federal government had taken measures to prevent the entry of virus into the country.

The government had allocated sufficient funds for all the provinces to combat the menace, he said.

The Sindh government had decided to provide feed to poultry farms at discounted rates to help them make up for their losses, he said.

Mr Junejo said that the Sindh government had planned to establish 23 dairy colonies spread over 200 acres each in the province. Out of the 200, one and a half acre each would go to 100 farmers and 50 acres would be reserved for agro-business, he said.

In addition, plans for an export processing zone for dairy products spread over 500 acres were in the pipeline, he added.

EXTENDED: The director general of Hyderabad Development Authority on Tuesday extended the date to May 31 for the clearance of dues of plots in Kohsar Extension Housing Scheme.