The ongoing works for the construction of Thiruvananthapuram city Corporation’s modern slaughterhouse at Kunnukuzhy is expected to be completed by the end of the year, according to Corporation officials.
On Thursday, civic body authorities held a review meeting with the officials of the Kerala Electrical and Allied Engineering Company Limited (KEL), the implementing agency of the project, during which the officials were asked to come up with a schedule for the completion of the pending works.
As of now, the installation of the cutting machine, hangers and conveyors for transporting the cattle and meat from one wing to the next, storage spaces and the specific areas for cattle to be kept have been completed. But, the major work of installation of the rendering plant and the biogas plant associated with it as well as the tiling work of a major portion of the building, the overhead tanks and concreting of the approach road is remaining.
Trial run
Once the civil works are completed, KEL will carry out a trial run for about a month. The Corporation will open the slaughterhouse for normal operations only after a successful trial run.
The new facility is also focussed on producing value-added products, including fertilizers, pet food, and fish meal. The whole set-up will include a meat processing unit, an effluent treatment plant, and biogas plant.
The project to set up a modern slaughterhouse at Kunnukuzhy has now become a long-running story stretching for eleven years now, during which many proposals were dropped even before implementation began. The Kunnukuzhy slaughterhouse, the only such facility under the city Corporation, was closed in February 2013, as it failed to manage the waste generated in a scientific way in the absence of a centralised waste treatment plant. The Pollution Control Board ordered its closure for non-compliance in setting up plants to treat slaughter waste. The plant had a capacity to slaughter around 25 animals daily.
Illegal abattoirs
In the absence of a slaughterhouse, illegal abattoirs have flourished across the city, sometimes even operating from households. Most of these slaughterhouses operate in unhygienic surroundings and use inhumane methods to kill the animals.
The growth in the number of stray dogs in the city has been partly attributed to the dumping of waste from these illegal slaughterhouses in public spaces. The absence of a legal abattoir has also prevented the Corporation authorities from launching a full-fledged drive against illegal ones.
