EDITORIAL

Long overdue

It's a pity that City Veterinarian Tomas Forteza only discovered the unsanitary slaughtering of animals at the city slaughterhouse just now. The practice, actually, has been going on since the time of Mayor Mansing Malabor. In fact, TNT has run a series of exposes before about the deplorable state of the slaughterhouse in Molo district but nobody paid attention to it.

During Malabor's time with the help of the Department of Agriculture (DA) millions worth of modern facilities were acquired to be installed inside the slaughterhouse to make it compliant with the standard set by the National Meat Inspection Commission. The facilities, however, were not put into use during the time because of lack of a three-phase transformer that would make it run. The city engineer's office that time assured to negotiate with Panay Electric Company (Peco) for the installation of the needed transformer. But nothing was heard after that. In short, no three phase transformer was intalled and so the facilities became inoperational.

The facilities which were never put into use have slowly deteriorated then later cannibalized by the slaughterhouse workers themselves. Millions worth of people's money simply lost. Unfortunately, nobody was made liable for the said loss. Meanwhile, the conventional, unsanitary way of slaughtering animals continued inside the city slaughterhouse.

The DA has again alloted millions of pesos this time for the construction of a new and modern slaughterhouse in Brgy. Tagbak, Jaro. Reportedly, the funds for the project was released last year yet, but for whatever reason the project has barely took off.

With the sorry state of the city slaughterhouse, indeed it should have been closed down a long time ago. Our city officials should understand that the unsanitary condition at the city slaughterhouse is hazardous to the people's health.

For a higly urbanized city like ours it is very unacceptable not to have a modern slaughterhouse. The component city of Passi which is still very young even boasts of its “AA” standard slaughterhouse. Why Iloilo City can't have its own is a big question.