County Director for Veterinary services Dr. Benson Longor today opened a 3-day training workshop of Sub counties technical team training on Technological, Innovations and Management Practices (TIMPS).
The participants are mainly Government frontline extension officers drawn from different directorates of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock Development and Fisheries. The officers are expected to cascade the TIMPs trainings to all funded groups (CIGs/VMGs) and Sub projects beneficiaries across the County of Turkana.
The training which has been organised by Emergency Locust Responses Project (ELRP) is aimed at equipping participants with TIMPs knowledge to enable officerd backstop crop/livestock based micro and sub projects and to train beneficiaries to adopt best practices for improved productivity.
In his remarks, Dr Longor said the TIMPs training approach was key to extension staff who interact directly with farmers and pastoralists groups at the grassroots level.
He acknowledged that ELRP project had extensively supported livelihoods activities across Turkana and underscored that the training is an additional support to various Livestock and crop based enterprises.
County coordinator for ELRP and Deputy Director for Agriculture Victor Lochee revealed that out of 554 developed and approved micro proposal, 198 had already been funded.
The remaining 356 micro proposals are approved and awaiting funding. The ceiling for one micro-project proposal is Ksh. 250,000 – 400,000 depending on needs of the bankable proposal developed by community CIGs/VMGs.
Initial mandate of ELRP, before its change to a resilience programme was prevention and response to desert locust infestation outbreak threat and strengthened preparatory system.
Director Lochee said additional wards will benefit after the expansion of project scope that widened to cover the fisher folk.
The new wards include Katilu, Nakalale, Loima, Lokichar, Kangatosa and Songot. When formed in 2020, ELRP programme targeted 10 wards that were severely affected by desert locust invasion.
