The infrastructures to be built include community pastures, rehabilitation of the Department Livestock Services (DLS) lab, standard veterinary drug outlets, fattening and breeding schemes, mini diary, milk collection centers, slaughterhouses, meat stalls, and a farmer demonstration center in Yorro Berry Kunda (YBK).
Handing over the sites at Soma in Lower River Region(LRR), SRPEP Project Director, Mamud Njie explained that the small ruminant project will construct facilities including 20 boreholes, 20 community pastures, 30 breeding schemes, 30 fattening schemes, 15 veterinary pharmacies, 10 livestock markets as well as 10 meat stalls and 10 slaughterhouses across the country.
He added that, in addition, a training center (at YBK) and the veterinary laboratory (at Abuko) would be constructed and rehabilitated respectively.
According to the Project Director, all these structures have already been contracted and will be constructed within a period of one year.
“Soma will have a slaughterhouse, a veterinary outlet, and a small ruminant market. This is a very important milestone for the project in the component of production, processing, and marketing,” he explained.
Momodou Darboe, Director General for The Gambia Livestock Marketing Agency (GLMA), revealed that they did a feasibility study and realised that there was a need to establish markets and meat stalls at Soma.
“The slaughterhouse in Soma will help them have meat that is fit for human consumption since meat can be easily contaminated at the slaughterhouse if proper facilities are not in place,” he explained.
Alh Yahya Jarjusey, Chief of Jarra West expressed gratitude to the project for its effort to establish the facilities which are timely and important.
He stated that getting drugs for their animals is a major problem because they have to go to Abuko to get drugs but with the establishment of the pharmacy, the health condition of their animals would be improved and would also save them the cost of transporting them to Abuko for treatment.
