The government is considering upgrading the local slaughterhouse as rebuilding it could be “a huge cost overrun and loss of money”, Secretary for Administration and Justice André Cheong Weng Chon said during a plenary session in the hemicycle of the local legislature yesterday.
Cheong stressed that if a new slaughterhouse were to be built, the estimated cost would be around 600 to 700 million patacas.
Cheong made the remarks during a Q&A session about his portfolio’s policy guidelines for next year, following Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng’s 2023 Policy Address last Tuesday.
Cheong pointed out that the abattoir can slaughter 300 pigs and two to three cows each day, adding that the Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM) is making plans for the future operations of the slaughterhouse and exploring other options to ensure the supply of fresh pork to the public at a reasonable price.
Cheong said that even before the COVID-19 outbreak in June, the Municipal Affairs Bureau had developed a range of pandemic prevention contingency plans at the slaughterhouse in response to the possible discovery of a confirmed local case, including working with staff on secondment from Zhuhai during a local outbreak.
However, Cheong acknowledged that the equipment in the abattoir is old, and should there be another pandemic outbreak, he was worried that the staff from Zhuhai “wouldn’t know how to use” the equipment.
Cheong said this was because the slaughterhouse in Ilha Verde was rather “outdated”, including the working environment, machinery, apart from the fact that its workforce is getting old, and there were no new entrants to the industry.
There is only one abattoir in Macau, the Municipal Affairs Bureau being its largest shareholder.
Secretary for Administration and Justice André Cheong Weng Chon addresses yesterday’s Q&A session about his portfolio’s policies for next year, in the legislature’s hemicycle.
– Photo courtesy of TDM
