The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo Senior Business Reporter
HAMILTON Insurance will next month introduce a livestock insurance policy cover in the Matabeleland region as part of its efforts to ensure that farmers guard against the risks of losing their animals to disasters.
The company’s general manager, Mr Rindayi Nyatsanza, said the livestock insurance policy was likely to play a major role in boosting the national herd as well as creating measurable value to farmers and communities at large.
The cover will cater for cattle, pigs, sheep and goats among other livestock.
“The main purpose of this product is to provide peace of mind to livestock farmers by providing cover, which creates and preserves value since they would be having adequate cover in case of any losses.
“Although this cover has generally been in existence over the years, very little effort to perfect it to suit the local farmer has been made and Hamilton Insurance has made a specialised product that captures the needs of the local farmer in Zimbabwe,” Mr Nyatsanza said.
Official data shows that Zimbabwe has a national cattle herd of 5,3 million down from nearly six million cattle in 1996 due to droughts which have killed thousands of cattle especially in the region.
Over the years, Jupiter Insurance used to offer livestock cover although it proved to be ineffective after the company was deregistered by the Insurance and Pension Commission in 2014 for failure to meet capital requirements.
“There are generally monetary and non-monetary benefits of obtaining this cover to farmers both in the short-term and in the long-run. As Hamilton Insurance, we are into business for economic growth. This product will boost the national herd and create measurable value to our farmers and communities at large,” Mr Nyatsanza said.
The company’s Matabeleland region branch controller, Mr Clettos Murenzvi said the introduction of the livestock insurance cover was part of the insurance firm’s efforts to increase and fortify its agricultural sector products package.
“Basically what we are looking at is to provide insurance policy cover for the agricultural sector. We are already doing so with tobacco farmers, the scheme is well co-ordinated because we engaged the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board. We do everything through a stop order facility.
“We have decided to look at the farming activities in this region and realised that livestock rearing is the most practised thus we decided to introduce this type of policy cover. We will cover diseases, which are peculiar to certain animals but we won’t cover those that die due to an outbreak of a larger scale,” Mr Murenzvi said.
The insurance would also cover theft, accidental deaths, electrocution, lightning and fire as well as animals which are lost due to straying.
“We saw that there is a need to introduce this policy because most of the rural farmers are disadvantaged in the event that they lose a huge herd and end up being capacitated by non-governmental organisations.
“Our thrust is to make the farmer more sustainable because we are now talking to financial institutions through the NGOs to ensure that they agree to take cattle as collateral,” Mr Murenzvi said.
He said the company was working towards changing the mindset of communal farmers from practising subsistence to commercial farming to enable them to obtain meaningful returns from farming.
“Hamilton Insurance is prudent in risk management. Therefore, for this product class solid re-insurance support is in place backed by accredited and financially sound re-insurance companies locally and abroad,” Mr Murenzvi said.
Matabeleland South provincial livestock specialist Mrs Simangaliphi Ngwabi said the livestock insurance cover concept was a good initiative but there was a need for the company to convince communal farmers to embrace it.
“There is no doubt that the livestock insurance policy is a good scheme but I wonder how many farmers will embrace it.
“This company (Hamilton Insurance) needs to do aggressive campaigns aimed at convincing farmers to accept it. Farmers need to understand that they tend to benefit by insuring their livestock, in the event of calamities,” Mrs Ngwabi said.
