15,000 Chickens Transported by MAF Timor-Leste
During March 2018, the MAF Timor-Leste Programme only had one aircraft. VH-MQO faithfully flew around the country delivering sick and injured patients to Dili National Hospital for the Ministry of Health. The plane was used by significant government officials like Jose Ramos Horta, former Prime Minister and President of Timor-Leste and Dr Mari Alkatiri, current Prime Minister of the country. Then VH-MQO has transported staff from aid and development organisations around the nation for their work in health care and technology development. And it has carried fifteen thousand chickens to Oecusse.
Fifteen thousand chickens!? A local business importing and selling chickens has begun in the Oecusse region of Timor Leste. This is a small pocket of the country, surrounded by West Timor, Indonesia. The small local business has support from ZEESM, Special Zones of Social Market Economy of Timor-Leste, a national development programme used to implement innovative governmental policy. The chickens are bought in from Johor, Malaysia and then transported via Singapore to the international airport in Dili. The crates of baby chickens are then relocated to the MAF hangar and into the GA8 Airvan for their one hour trip to Oecusse.
With the assistance of MAF, this small business has flown fifteen thousand chickens to their farm in Oecusse this month, where the chickens will be cared for until they are big enough to sell locally and hopefully throughout Timor-Leste. The local business staff have reported that by using the MAF aircraft their chicks are reaching their new home with a lower mortality rate than they have experienced using other methods of transportation. And so they hope to continue importing chickens to Oecusse on a fortnightly basis in the future.
It has taken three flights to transport this many baby chicks to Oecusse. On one occasion, bad weather and an urgent medevac flight request meant that the baby chicks got to have an unexpected overnight sleepover in the MAF Hangar. But the chicks seemed to cope well with the change in plans, once they had some food and water. The owners of this local business may just become one of MAF Timor-Leste’s most frequent fliers, as we assist them to develop their business in a poor and isolated part of the world.
