Dear Editor
- Shortage of 129 Veterinary doctors (Vets) in SA, which accounts for 45% of all funded positions, posing a risk to animal health, food safety, and security.
- The shortage has persisted for the past 5 years, hindering efforts to maintain the health of livestock amidst disease outbreaks.
- Minister Motsoaledi urged to reconsider removing Vets from critical skills list.
In a response to a DA parliamentary question, the Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, Thoko Didiza, revealed that South Africa currently has a shortage of 129 Veterinary doctors (Vets) – which equates to 45% of all the total funded posts. This is an alarming vacancy rate considering the critical role that Vets play in animal health, food safety and security.
The DA is therefore calling on the Minister of Home Affairs, Aaron Motsoaledi, to reconsider the decision that his Department took to remove Veterinary doctors from the critical skills list. As things stands, South Africa is unable to fill all vacancies within the sector for Vets despite having fully budgeted for them in every budget cycle, from 2019 to date.
In addition to the widely known problem of qualified Vets emigrating overseas, in her parliamentary reply, Minister Didiza indicated that the persistent vacancy problem in the sector is caused by a constant efflux of state veterinarians who are being recruited by the private sector and challenges to get suitably qualified applicants.
What is more alarming is that this Vet shortage has been a recurring problem over the past 5 years. In fact, as noted by the Minister in her reply, the country has recorded a Vet vacancy rate of 38% over the past 5 years. With South Africa constantly having animal disease outbreaks, such as foot and mouth disease, it is concerning that we are unable to find professionals with the requisite skills set to keep the national stock healthy.
The decision by Home Affairs to remove Veterinary doctors from the critical skills list was ill-thought and should be reversed as a matter of urgency. By placing Vets back on the critical skills list, South Africa will be able to attract qualified foreign professionals to temporarily fill the skills gap while we train our own local talent for this vital function.
Regards
Noko Masipa MP
DA Shadow Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development
Gas Man
There was a postman who is always happy. in the other side there is harry who would just stares at the happy postman everyday and asks himself \”What\’s the secret of this man\”.
One day Harry decided to stop the postman and ask him why he\’s always smiling and happy, what he did.
the postman answered:\”Whenever I\’m handing a mail to a women I kisses her and I get more than just a kiss sometimes.\”
Harry liked the idea and went to a poste office and proposed for the job then he got it . In his first delivery Harry was so excited try the kissing thing out, and as he thought, there was a hot women in front of the first door, he went directly towared her and pasted her a kiss staight in the lips, in the center of that her husband suddenly appeared in front him and asked:\”WTF ARE YOU DOING.\”
\”I\’m just delivering a \’kiss\’ was sent from China\” Harry answered in a sporadic tone.
\”Very nice, you came on time, I want to send a \’Fuck\’ with you to South Africa\” the husband responded while draging Harry into the house.
Darth 44
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.