KARACHI: On 10 December, 2019, the Consulate-General of Japan in Karachi organized the ODA Press Tour in collaboration with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), in which a group of journalists from various media houses participated, says a Press release.
The purpose of the ODA Press Tour was to increase the local media’s awareness on Japanese Government Assistance Projects and its initiatives in Pakistan, thereby informing the people of Pakistan about Japan’s contribution towards Pakistan’s development in various fields such as education, agriculture and human security.
The journalists, accompanied by both Consulate and JICA staffs, departed from Hyderabad Press Club early in the morning and undertook a full-day tour, visiting three project sites in the greater Hyderabad area.
The first site visited was the Family Educational Services Foundation’s (FESF) Deaf Reach School in Rashidabad. Two specialized buses for transportation of students to and from school, as well as kitchen items for vocational training classes were provided by the Government of Japan as part of the Grant Assistance for Grassroots Human Security Projects (GGP) scheme in 2018, which was US$77,476 (approx. Rs.8 million) for “The Project for the Improvement of Special Education School for Deaf in Rashidabad.”
Media personnel were able to personally see the functionality of the vehicles, and were even treated to a lunch prepared especially by the hospitable students and staffs of the Deaf Reach School, who take courses on the preparation of food and bakery items as part of their curriculum.
Since a year has passed, the project presently ensures access to educational opportunity towards more than 200 students in Rashidabad campus, and the FESF Deaf Reach School provides the bakery classes at daily basis for up to 20 students. Thus, the GGP project facilitates employment opportunities for students with hearing impairment through related vocational training and also aims to increase its outputs in the near future.
The media was also given a tour of the Buffalo Calf Salvation Center in Hyderabad, the center of a successful and continuing project set up by the Sindh Livestock and Fisheries Department and aided by the expertise of JICA through consistent and ongoing technical cooperation as part of “The Project on Sustainable Livestock Development for Rural Sindh (PSLD).”
Calf Salvation Center aims to save the high genetic milking buffalo calves being slaughtered in cattle colonies, develop appropriate technologies to control the mortality and distribute them to the small scale farmers in the rural areas under the project pilot districts. Japanese experts and the Department were able to reduce calf mortality rate from 40% to 8% in the calf salvation center and distributed almost 200 heads to the farmers through the project.
The calve salvation system is to enable small scale farmers to increase milk production and asset formulation by distributing calves born from highly productive mothers in cattle colonies.
In tandem with JICA’s project, media personnel were taken to the site of the project’s pilot farmer in Saleh Dal Village, rural Hyderabad. Here, the media got to witness firsthand how a simple tenant livestock farmer, Kolhi, graduated from sharing 3 buffalos and a heifer in 2014, to a total of eleven owned and shared animals currently.
Kohli demonstrated to the group how technical expertise from the Project on PSLD has helped him and his family increase weekly income, better the quality of animal feed, as well as inculcate modern farming and livestock practices such as inoculations into their routine, all the while increasing their livestock assets over the years.