KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has taken serious notice of the diseases afflicting peafowl in Thar desert and ordered the wildlife ministry to take immediate measures to safeguard the bird and ensure its health.

`We have received orders from the chief minister to make available all necessary vaccines and antibiotics in the area to protect the bird,` said a senior official in the wildlife ministry on Monday.

Manzoor Shaikh, secretary of forests and wildlife, told reporters at his office that teams had been formed which would be present in various talukas of Tharparkar district.

`They have sufficient stock of vaccines and antibiotics to distribute in villages and keep ample quantity of drugs at the wildlife camps set up there for the purpose,` he said.

He appealed to people to report alling peafowl in their vicinity to the wildlife reporting centre or the control room at the deputy commissioner`s office in Thar.

`As soon as a report is received, teams will take the ailing bird in custody and put it in quarantine till [it has] recovered completely,` he said.

Officials in the Sindh government said that villagers who would bring the ailing peafowl to a reporting centre would be compensated for travelling expenses.

They said that with the approach of summer, the mortality rate in peafowlhadgoneupdue toincreasingheatand low levels of resistance in the bird.

`The mortality in the peafowl is (on the rise) not only because of Ranikhet [Newcastle] disease but also because of heat and certain poultry viruses, said an official.

The wildlife ministry appealed to local population to separate the diseased poultry from peafowl immediacy as the birds were highly sensitive to poultry viruses and got affected immediately.

Officials said the livestock ministry had also been taken in the loop and requested to visit the affected area and vaccinate poultry andlivestock.

Mr Shaikh said that his ministry had taken measures to combat the peafowl mortality, for which three teams comprising wildlife officials and veterinarians from poultry unit of the livestock ministry had been constituted in seven talukas of Nagarparkar, Dalhi, Chhachhro, Kaloi, Islamkot, Mithi, and Diplo.

Officials said that all the teams had been tasked to visit villages in their respective jurisdiction on daily basis to create awareness and distribute multivitamins and antibiotics to villagers to provide advance treatment to the ailing peafowl.

Such medicines, they added, would increase immunity levels in healthy population of peafowl. Furthermore, officials claimed, the teams were already spreading awareness among general public about how to take care of the diseased bird through banners and posters in the area. `Awareness messages are also being aired on localFM radio stations,` said Mr Shaikh.

He said that an emergency cell had also been set up at the Tharparkar deputy commissioner`s office at Mithi to meet emergencies and ensuring quick response.

CM displeased at use of trolleys to transport bodies Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, who returned home on Monday after a three-day visit to China, ordered the commissioner of Benazirabad to submit a report as to why no ambulances were arranged for transporting the bodies of the labourers who were gunned down by militants in Gwadar to their village.

A spokesperson at the CM House said the chief minister had expressed serious displeasure over the media reports that the bodies of the labourers had been transported through tractor-trolleys instead of ambulances to their village in Naushahro Feroze district.

`Where were the officials of the district administration and officials concerned of the health ministry when the martyred labourers` bodies were being transported through tractor-trolleys? Why did they not arrange ambulances for them?` he asked.

He said that such attitude on the part of the district administration and the health officials had saddened him.

`Such things can never be ignored and should not be tolerated,` he said.

He asked the commissioner of Benazirabad to submit a report in this regard within the shortest possible time.