The Central Equatoria State government and a private investor, Zebed Investment Company, on Thursday, inaugurated a new abattoir in Juba’s Gudele suburb.
Speaking during the official opening of the slaughterhouse, Juba County Commissioner Charles Joseph Wani said the facility will provide clean and healthy meat to the inhabitants of the city.
“Our citizens are suffering from the issue of cattle being slaughtered in unhygienic places but we can now start with this one. If people can invest in modern abattoirs, I am sure they will earn more than hotels because we eat around 250 head of cattle every day,” he said. “Cattle are being slaughtered on the ground in unsafe places across the country and as the commissioner, I encourage people to invest in slaughterhouses like this so that we can slowly improve.”
Commissioner Wani said acknowledged abattoirs in Juba are not up to standard but that they cannot be shut down due to a lack of proper facilities.
“The slaughterhouse in Gumbo is not safe but there is no alternative. We would have closed it down but if you close it, where will these people go? We now want the cattle to be slaughtered in a good clean place,” he added.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Butchers Association of Central Equatoria, Peter Ladu Bero, urged the government to empower his outfit to close all makeshift abattoirs.
“I want the government to help us as butchers to stop the slaughter of cattle in unhealthy places, to empower us to close all illegal slaughter places so that our citizens can eat clean meat slaughtered from clean places,” he said. “This is the first modern slaughterhouse in Central Equatoria. People are slaughtering animals on the ground and meat is mixed with dirt which is not right.”
“We want the government to bring trucks for transporting meat because people use open rickshaws at the moment and it is not safe,” Ladu added.
For his part, Nhial Bol Aken, the chairperson of the national parliament’s specialized committee on livestock, said hotels in Juba import beef due to a lack of safe slaughterhouses in the country.
“We are getting 17 tons of beef from outside the country for our hotels here just because we do not have a slaughterhouse. We have the power to tell these people not to bring foreign meat,” he said. “We are also importing nearly 20 tons of chicken meat. The next move is to see how we can develop a poultry facility.”
According to Zebed Investment Company, the new abattoir costs over USD 300,000 and has the capacity to process over 300 head of cattle a day.
The abattoir is a Public Private Partnership between the Central Equatoria State Government and Zebed Investment Company.