CDGK Veterinary Department has yet to be devolved after 9 years

“The Veterinary Department has a crucial role to play regarding quality and hygienic edible food such as veal, meat and poultry but it has just one vehicle for a city with huge population, thousands of meat and veal shops. The DO Vet.D is so powerless that he could not impose just one rupee as fine against offenders”

December 27, 2009
By Irfan Aligi

KARACHI: Since devolution in 2001, the veterinary department (Vet.D) of the City District Government Karachi (CDGK) has been ignored while it has key role to play as regards to ensuring quality of certain edible goods.

A well-placed officer told Daily Times that the devolution made in 2001 and protected with the Sindh Local Government Ordinance-2001 has made it mandatory for the Town Municipal Administrations (TMA) to adopt necessary measures for enabling the Vet.D to function in the true spirit of quality-assuring bureaux for the protection of citizens’ rights for quality goods.

The officer further said that the section 45-A (K) of the SLGO-2001 binds the TMAs to make necessary arrangements to curb illegal slaughterhouses and ensure constant quality of meat and veal through flawless monitoring and examination of the product at the time of slaughtering and while on sale at shops. Unfortunately, these measures have yet to be taken.

The entire Vet.D is barren in terms of logistic support as there is just a single van for a city of around 18 million people, more than 400 small, medium and large markets and 25,000 meat and veal shops, around 1,000 shops for poultry meat, two official slaughter House and countless illegal private abattoirs but one poor Vet.D without required manpower, equipments, powers for regulating schemes and ordering the maintenance of quality and hygiene of these edible varieties of food, the officer claimed.

The officer said that the District Officer Vet.D had once banned outcoming of live animals from city’s largest slaughterhouse but to no avail as the stakeholders had posed great law and order threat.

The said DO had sought imposition of section 144 of the Cr PC time and again but it was not favoured due to undisclosed reasons. The Vet.D has another plan to seek these measures take force after tenth of Muharram so as to strictly monitor and curb the menace, Daily Times has reliably learnt.

The officer added that it is the TMAs’ responsibility especially Town Officer Municipal Regulations (TOMR) to see that no single piece of meat and veal was sold at shops without Vet.D’s official stamp. The stamped product is sign of quality while the rest was risky and could be hazardous to citizens’ health. The unstamped product has lesser value in terms of price and is inflicting loss of revenue as well.

The officer regretted as he termed that these TMORs were a burden on CDGK because they had failed to fulfill their official responsibilities, but still they have been offered such lucrative jobs with mentionable pay and perks and extraordinary powers adding that it was a misery that the DO Vet.D was not allowed to impose fine even for Rs one to any offender while these TMAs’ secretaries have been conferred upon these lavish powers, who could impose penalty upto Rs 500.

It has been revealed to Daily Times that the TMAs secretaries and TOMRs have turned a blind eye on these issues of illegal abattoirs for personal benefits.

Shopkeepers also told Daily Times that the members of CDGK price control committee and Sindh government food inspectors had been receiving their shares in terms of best part of product for free and some money once in a week.

In this regard, a veal merchant who sells “pressure walla gosht” (water-injected veal for increasing weight) told Daily Times that Police of the area concerned was paid Bhutta (Extortion money) worth Rs 1, 000 per month per shop.

However, the Vet.D has so far conducted more than 150 raids and confiscated around 35,000 kgs of meat and veal without legal stamping, Daily Times has learned.