Dhaka’s slaughterhouses in limbo

The standards of the existing slaughterhouses are far from satisfactory. The Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) runs two slaughterhouses – one in Hazaribagh and another in Kaptanbazar, while the north corporation (DNCC) operates three at Mohammadpur, Mirpur 11 and Gulshan Kitchen Market. These five houses cannot meet the current demand for slaughtering facilities. Apart from the Mirpur slaughterhouse, the rest are operating with traditional equipment and that is too little to meet the demands of the city dwellers during Eid-ul-Azha. Dhaka north launched the country’s only one modern slaughterhouse in the city’s Mirpur area in 2015.  The facilities have the capacity to manage 100-110 animals every day, said a DNCC official. Butchers from the city’s Kaptanbazar, Hazaribagh and Mohammadpur told the Dhaka Tribune the city corporations have taken no step in modernising, repairing or increasing the numbers of slaughterhouses in more than a decade. Due to insufficient numbers of slaughterhouses, the corporations have designated 1,000 spots – 496 in the north and 504 in the south - for slaughtering sacrificial animals in the upcoming Eid-ul-Azha. More spots may be assigned based on need. There were 208 spots in DNCC and 285 were in DSCC last year. But the corporations’ plans to contain the slaughtering of sacrificial animals during the last Eid-ul-Azha failed as city councillors and ruling Awami League leaders, associate organisation leaders and activists slaughtered cattle on city roads, and city dwellers also ignored the mayors’ calls to take their sacrificial cattle to designated spots. Mayors of the two city corporations of Dhaka have requested the cooperation of city dwellers to properly remove waste from sacrificial animals in the capital during Eid-ul-Azha on Tuesday. In August, the government fixed 6,233 spots in the 11 city corporations and 53 district towns for slaughtering sacrificial animals during Eid-ul-Azha. Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain said some 35-40 lakh animals would be slaughtered across the country during Eid, 716,940 among those in the city corporations.