KOHAT: In the absence of proper slaughterhouse the butchers here have been slaughtering cattle inside their homes instead of changing temporary facilities at various places to save the meat from catching dirt.

Moreover sick and dying animals are also being slaughtered far away from the city where they could not be seen by the people or officials and sold to the butchers in the city at throwaway prices. There is no facility to check the meat at the shops whether it is of a live or dead animal.

Talking to this scribe, the butchers complained that the administration had provided them a house in Hafizabad after much wait, but there the cattle meat mingled with dirt and its appearance became distorted after which people did not buy such meat.

The administration had decided to reconstruct the 50 years old slaughterhouse several months ago and shifted it to a house in Kalo Chinna, but there the residents stopped the butchers from work and demanded its removal because of stinking smell in the area as nobody would come to lift the offal for days. Similarly there was no water facility there.

The butchers then started slaughtering animals in front of the cantonment police station in a ground which turned into a garbage dump spreading bad smell. It was later shifted to an open place near the Peshawar bypass where dirt flew in the air and the people too objected to it that it could not be established in populated area, after which it was moved to Hafizabad area.

The other problem in checking the cattle is that the slaughtering of animals starts after midnight and continues till wee hours when all officials are asleep. The officials usually mint money from the butchers for allowing sick animals for slaughtering by giving official stamp to butchers, which is tantamount to playing with the people’s health.

An official said that timings of slaughtering animals started at around 11pm and continued till the morning prayers.

The TMA has banned the slaughtering after 7am. However, animals are either slaughtered secretly inside the meat shops or at places other than the makeshift slaughterhouse.

Butchers association’s president Mr Ashiq, when summoned by the administration to state reason for slaughtering animals near the cantonment police station, said that they were being expelled by the people wherever they started work.

He said that there were 160 meat shops in the city and hundreds of animals were slaughtered each day in the absence of a proper slaughterhouse.

Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2018