MCD invites bids for waste treatment at Delhi’s Ghazipur abattoir

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has invited bids to set up a slaughterhouse paunch waste treatment plant following violations at the Ghazipur abbatoir. The move comes after the National Green Tribunal reprimanded the corporation for polluting effluents ending up in the Yamuna river.

Three days after NGT reprimanded the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) for violations at the Ghazipur abbatoir as polluting effluents end up in the Yamuna, the civic body on Thursday invited bids to set up a slaughterhouse paunch waste treatment plant at a cost of ₹6.83 crore.

The NGT had reprimanded the MCD for violations at the Ghazipur abbatoir as polluting effluents end up in the Yamuna. (HT Photo)

A senior MCD official said that a pre-bid meeting will be held with private companies on November 1. “The bid finalisation process is expected to end on November 7 and the project to develop the treatment plant is estimated to be over in four months,” the official added.

The Ghazipur slaughterhouse, the city’s lone legal abattoir, was closed down on May 30 last year after the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) withdrew consent for operation while referring to a National Green Tribunal (NGT) order and violation of norms. The facility was reopened on July 6 only after DPCC gave its approval on conditions of fulfilling the pollution norms, which included adding ingesta-paunch waste and RO plants. MCD claims that the RO facility has been added.

A joint committee comprising the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and DPCC had inspected the slaughterhouse in August this year and submitted a report to NGT, which said untreated effluents were being dumped from the slaughtering area and were ultimately ending up in the Yamuna, adding that no treatment plant had been installed yet either.

A bench headed by NGT chairperson Prakash Shrivastava said MCD had four weeks to fix the issues highlighted in the report, directing the joint committee to carry out a fresh inspection after this period. The tribunal further observed that the water quality and microbiology analysis report submitted by the committee revealed that the count of total coliform, faecal coliform, and E. coli was beyond permissible levels.

A second MCD official said that the new plant will be able to treat all the ingesta, paunch and dung-related waste generated by the slaughterhouse.

The Ghazipur slaughterhouse is the only legal abattoir in the city where goat, sheep and buffaloes are slaughtered for meeting the domestic demand. The facility, built at a cost of ₹150 crore by MCD, became operational in 2009. It has three slaughter halls — one for large animals and two for the small ones.

It has a capacity to operate in three shifts with two of them being reserved to meet domestic consumption. Each shift handles about 4,500 sheep or goats and 500 buffaloes.

While poultry slaughter is allowed in several places in the city, goats, lambs and buffaloes can only be butchered at the Ghazipur slaughterhouse, located on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border.