HCM City – HCM City’s plan to set up a mechanised slaughterhouse system replacing the existing manual one has been stymied for more than a decade after getting entangled in red tape.

Since 2005, when the plan was set in motion, the city has closed 23 manual abattoirs. The plan would see the 18 remaining ones still in operation also closed and replaced with three mechanized slaughterhouses.

However, they have been delayed by tortuous administrative procedures.

The Tân Hiệp Food Processing Factory, twice postponed -- in 2007 and 2012 – was to have become operational by the end of next year.

But Bạch Đăng Quang, director of Tân Hiệp Co-operative, which will build the abattoir, said: “We have not been able to build the factory because local authorities could not tell us how much money we have to pay for land.”

The land earmarked for the abattoir in Tân Hiệp Commune, Hóc Môn District, has 1,900sq.m of a canal running through it, for which authorities have been unable to name a price.

The 2003 Land Law does not spell out the compensation to be paid for public lands.

But unless the payment is made and the title deeds are acquired, the abattoir cannot get a licence.

Meanwhile, Tân Hiệp has completed all other procedures such as getting its master plan licensed, drafting a 1/500 master plan, making a transport impact evaluation, and getting a domestic waterway port licence and environmental impact evaluation done.

Now many of them will have to be done again because their use-by date has passed.

The co-operative has spent eight years so far out of the project’s 50-year validity period.

Related city agencies like the departments of Agriculture and Rural Development, Finance, Natural Resources and Environment have met multiple times without being able to resolve the problem.

The other two mechanised abattoirs planned by the Sài Gòn Agriculture Corporation and Vissan company are facing similar problems. – VNS