The effluent treatment plant at Thiruvananthapuram Corporation’s modern slaughterhouse in Kunnukuzhy is scheduled to be commissioned on December 1 after Kerala Electrical and Allied Engineering Company Ltd agreed to rectify technical defects that had delayed the facility’s full operation.
The decision was taken at a corporation meeting convened to resolve prolonged problems with the treatment plant. KEL, which executed the project, will complete the pending repair work before the commissioning deadline. MR Farms, which holds the operation and maintenance contract, is expected to continue managing the facility once it becomes operational.
The ETP has been the main obstacle to commissioning the modern slaughterhouse, even though most of the facility’s infrastructure has been completed and it received consent to operate from the state pollution control board earlier this year. A disagreement between KEL and MR Farms over the treatment plant’s performance during trial runs had contributed to the delay.
KEL maintained that the equipment installed as part of the project was functional, while MR Farms raised concerns about the plant’s performance. The corporation subsequently intervened through inspections and tests aimed at identifying the defects, determining responsibility and establishing the corrective work required before the plant could process wastewater generated during slaughtering.
The corporation’s engineering wing had also planned a detailed assessment involving the movement of around one lakh litres of water through the treatment system. The exercise was intended to examine how the plant functioned at different stages and help settle the differences between the agencies involved.
An earlier trial run had exposed problems in the treatment process, including the mixing of blood generated during meat processing with wastewater. Officials had expressed concern that operating the slaughterhouse without resolving these deficiencies could create environmental and hygiene risks. The ETP is therefore a critical component of the facility rather than an ancillary installation, as its performance will determine whether slaughtering can proceed without repeating the pollution concerns associated with the city’s earlier facility.
The modern slaughterhouse was developed as a replacement for the old slaughterhouse, which was shut more than a decade ago following pollution-related concerns. The project cost has been estimated at between Rs 10.5 crore and Rs 15 crore in the available project references. It has been designed to handle between 50 and 75 animals and includes mechanised slaughtering systems, chilling facilities, a rendering plant, biogas units and an ETP with a treatment capacity of 50 kilolitres a day.
The December 1 deadline will now depend on KEL completing the identified rectification work and the corporation confirming that the treatment system performs adequately before the facility begins full-fledged operations within the month.
