New Delhi, Oct 27 (Inditop.com) Butchers and meat traders continued their stir here for the fifth day Tuesday and even threatened to take their strike countrywide if their demand to keep the capital’s slaughterhouse in the heart of the city was not met.
A meeting with chicken and fish traders is scheduled later Tuesday in an effort to urge them to join the protest. The price of both chicken and fish has risen by about 40 percent because of the strike.
The strike, which has threatened to leave the city meat-less, is to protest the court order to shift the capital’s slaughterhouse from the heart of the city to an edge. The traders said they would continue their strike till the authorities revoke the decision.
Mohammad Aqil Qureshi, president of the New Delhi Meat Traders’s Association, said: “We will continue our strike until the authorities rethink their decision. We have a meeting with the president of the chicken and fish traders this afternoon and we are positive that they too will join the strike.”
The centuries-old abattoir next to Idgah near the walled city was closed down last Thursday following a Supreme Court order, after a five-year legal battle between the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and the meat traders association.
The new slaughterhouse built in Ghazipur, east Delhi, is high tech, but has been criticized because it is next to a sanitary landfill site and a stinking drain.
“Not only will the new slaughterhouse ensure a huge cut in our livelihood — since machines will replace a large portion of our manpower — but also, the hygiene factor will be compromised in Ghazipur,” Qureshi told Inditop.
He threatened that the strike would become nationwide if a section of the old abattoir was not reopened by Thursday.
“If by Oct 29, the buffalo slaughter section of the abattoir is not reopened then the meat supply that has been feeding meat shops from neighbouring areas like Ghaziabad, Faridabad and Hapur will also be stopped,” Qureshi told Inditop.
Unhappy with the loss in business that the strike has resulted in, meat shop owners said that a consensus must be reached soon to end the ordeal.
“There is hardly any mutton supply in most of the meat shops. In places where you still get mutton, the prices have risen from Rs.180 to Rs.300. Left with no choice, meat eaters are shifting to chicken and fish, but the number of customers has dropped and this is affecting our business,” said Suraj Kant, a meat shop owner in Khan Market.
“The strike has also increased the price of chicken and fish. While chicken prices have gone up by 20-25 percent, fish prices have gone up by as much as 40 percent. I really think that the meat traders should shift to the new slaughterhouse and end the ordeal,” Kant told Inditop.
“Meat shop owners who sell frozen meat are not as affected as the smaller shops,” he added.
Qureshi said: “The MCD has said that if we don’t shift to the new slaughterhouse, our licences will be cancelled. But we will continue our protest against this.”
