Expressing his disappointment over the slow progress of construction of four modern slaughter houses in the twin cities, Mayor Majid Hussain warned of “strong action” against the contractor concerned as well the supervisory officials if works are not completed even after the extended timelines.
“There are several reasons behind the construction works getting delayed like the employees strike last year but we will also look into the issue of the contractor not doing things on time and the role being played by our own engineers,” he told presspersons here on Wednesday.
Mr. Hussain along with Deputy Mayor Raj Kumar and members of the standing committee inspected ongoing projects at Amberpet and Ramnaspura. The other two are being built at Bhoiguda and Gowlipura. All these places housed manual slaughterhouses before they were shut when a modern abattoir was built at Chengicherla eight years ago.
Amberpet slaughterhouse costing about Rs.15 crore is slated to be ready within a month or so and has the capacity of slaughtering 2,000 sheep and 300 cattle a day.
The Mayor and his team were not at all happy with the Gowliguda site and felt that the hollow bricks being used would not be able to hold the slab of the main building. The engineering-in-chief, R. Dhan Singh, was directed to pull up the executive engineer concerned and take up corrective steps.
Work on the effluent treatment plant and water tanks is still to begin. “I will be visiting these two sites again next month along with the other two project sites to keep track of the progress,” he said. Machinery imported from Belgium and Netherlands for both the slaughterhouses is ready.
Incidentally, Ramky Enviro Engineers is the contractor for all the four slaughterhouses as also the common rendering plant to be built at Chengicherla. The Central Government's Ministry of Food Processing has issued a grant of about Rs.15 crore for these works costing Rs.50 crore in total.
Tax defaulters
Mr. Hussain was all praise for the circle nine staff for collecting the pending property tax dues from Marriot Hotel. “We are definitely going to go against the big tax defaulters with pending bills of Rs.50 lakh and above. We are concentrating on the top 100 in each circle for now,” he added.
