NTFONJENI – Residents here will no longer have to travel to far places in order to access veterinary services for their animals.
This comes after the construction of a new veterinary office at Ntfonjeni which is expected to provide all services for animals.
In fact, services including livestock movement permits (Emapasi), livestock information updates, and veterinary doctors will now be available in this new centre.
Prior, the residents were forced to travel to either Mayiwane or Pigg’s Peak in order to access vet services and that came with extra costs.
Tired of these extra costs, it was then that over 2 000 farmers under this constituency contributed E70 each, raising around E140 000 for the construction of the new structure.
Eswatini Positive News has gathered that 19 dip tanks will benefit from the new vet offices.
According to Banele Shabangu, an Animal Health Inspector employed by the Ministry of Agriculture and was based in the constituency, the construction of the vet office is one of government’s decentralization programmes seeking to help farmers. He said the project was necessitated by the fact that farmers up-north were faced with challenges each time they wanted to access vet services. He said these challenges included traveling costs and a poor network sometimes.
“Following these challenges, the farmers agreed to contribute E70 each to raise the 10 percent required for project funding. Luckily, E140 000 was raised and the project got approved. Microproject estimated that the construction of the vet office would cost E1.2 million,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ntfonjeni Member of Parliament Sifiso Sompisi Magagula has thanked the government for the funding. He also thanked the farmers for showing interest in making sure that the project became a success.
“As the constituency council, we celebrate each time a project is successful because we record development. The residents are happy and we are ready for the offices to be complete so that we can start benefiting,” said an excited MP.