Agnes Winarti, The Jakarta Post, JAKARTA | Fri, 03/06/2009 10:54 AM
Chicken vendors raised objections Thursday about the administration’s plan to relocate all slaughterhouses by April next year to locations far from the city center.
The measure was adopted to stop the spread of bird flu in the capital.
Mahmung, 58, a chicken vendor since 1975 at the Palmerah traditional market in West Jakarta, called the relocation plan “ridiculous”.
“I sell my chickens here, but now I have to butcher them someplace as far away as Cakung in East Jakarta?” he told The Jakarta Post.
“I would lose customers if I sold dead chickens. All my customers want to see their chickens butchered right in front of them because they don’t want to buy expired chickens.”
He added he sold and slaughtered about 20 chickens a day.
The city’s husbandry, fishery and maritime agency is looking to have no more live poultry transported around Jakarta by April next year.
The agency has named five new locations for poultry slaughterhouses, including Rawa Kepiting and Cakung, both in East Jakarta; Petukangan in South Jakarta, Rorotan in North Jakarta, and Kalideres in West Jakarta.
However, agency head Edy Setiarto said so far only Rawa Kepiting was ready to receive relocated chicken vendors as “the construction is 90 percent complete”.
“Too much time and money will be wasted transporting chickens to the new slaughterhouse. It’d be more efficient if I butchered the chickens I bought at my own home, as is usually done,” said Supardjo, a chicken vendor at the Pondok Gede traditional market in East Jakarta.
Over the past three years, Supardjo has been a regular shopper at the wholesale chicken market in Pulogadung, East Jakarta.
“I breathe the smelly air of chicken faeces and feathers every day, yet I’ve never been sick. I just don’t get all this fuss about bird flu,” he said.
Similar sentiments were expressed by chicken slaughterer Marimin, who has lived for eight years inside the compound of the Pulogadung chicken market, and Fitri Astuti, who has lived for the past 10 years in a makeshift home back-to-back with a large chicken pen at the compound.
The administration’s concern over the spread of bird flu has failed to trickle down to chicken vendors.
“The relocation information is still unclear,” said Eti Suharyantini, a chicken wholesaler at Pulogadung and chairwoman of the association of chicken distributors.
“Basically, we don’t mind being moved, but the administration must make sure the capacity of the new place is adequate for us.”
Thirty-five chicken wholesalers at Pulogadung are members of the association.
The husbandry agency says the 2-hectare Rawa Kepiting site will have the largest capacity, holding up to 100,000 chickens a day.
“We heard we’ll be moved to Rawa Kepiting, but the place is too small for all of us, not to mention chicken traders from the other four municipalities,” said Eti, who sells 6 tons of chickens — 4,000 to 5,000 animals — each day from a 250-square-meter pen.
The husbandry agency’s Edy said major slaughterhouses in Srengseng, West Jakarta, and Pulogadung would not to be relocated because “we regard them as having good sanitation systems”.
The agency says some 1,342,000 poultry are kept inside and around residential areas. It also recorded some 1,200 illegal poultry slaughterhouses, 250 chicken shelters and 229 duck farms.
Edy also said the agency had not set a priority for which slaughterhouses to relocate first.
“First come, first served,” he said.
Chicken traders registering to move to the new sites must have their poultry checked by the agency at a cost of Rp 25 per chicken.
Those missing the April target face six-month jail sentences and fines of up to Rp 50 million.
The relocation of poultry slaughterhouses is regulated under a 2007 gubernatorial decree and bylaw on the monitoring of poultry husbandry and distribution.
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