Parliament’s health committee chaired by Charles Ayume (Koboko Municipality, NRM) has received the green light to ascertain food safety standards in abattoirs across the country.

Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa issued the directive during a sitting on Tuesday, February 13, following a matter of national importance to the shadow water and environment minister Christine Kaaya Nakimwero (Kiboga District Woman MP, NUP), bordering on the filthiness of most slaughterhouses.

Issuing this ruling, Tayebwa noted that the state of slaughterhouses affects all since it is where the majority of meat on the market originates.  

“I think the committee on health would be more appropriate, this is a health-related matter. Then when it comes back, we can have input from other committees. Let me assign the committee on health to visit and report back within one month. This is a very crucial issue,” Tayebwa ordered.

“This is something the sector committee can work on, through field reports, go on the ground and ascertain because the meat that comes from the abattoirs feeds the whole country,” he added.

Hygiene concerns

According to Christine Kaaya Nakimwero (Kiboga District Woman MP, NUP), the majority of slaughterhouses across Uganda lie in a stench occasioned by filthy toilets, poor drainage and lack of water.

“The general conditions at abattoirs is alarming, as the shadow minister for water and environment, I find it very important to state that most abattoirs don’t have toilets. Those that have toilets, the cleanliness is really not there. Most of them have no drainage to enable the dirty items from the abattoir to find their way out,” Kaaya illustrated.

“They do not have water facilities. Those who come to slaughter animals come with jerry cans and as they work out with little water, really the products are not well cleaned. Most of the abattoirs have no power, yet we are aware that some slaughtering even takes place before it is morning and so they just use torches and it is unsafe,” she added.

However, to make matters worse, Kaaya pointed out that relevant authorities supposed to streamline practice have thrown caution to the wind and instead are interested in generating non-tax revenue (NTR).

“Instead of concentrating on income and fees from employees of over sh30,000 and it goes above sh50,000 during big days. Let them also (health inspectors) look at general conditions of these abattoirs but we can also get a report as far as servicing and managing sanitation around these abattoirs is concerned,” she pointed out.

Government responds

Commenting on the matter, state minister for local government Victoria Rusoke clarified ideally, it is the responsibility of lower governments to maintain these abattoirs.

“It is that very revenue that they should use to maintain, update, upgrade, put other services into those abattoirs,” Rusoke stated.

Unfortunately, she pointed out that there is a lot of racketeering when it comes to revenue collection which the government is trying to address.

“There is a lot of mismanagement of collection of revenue. There is a new and proper system that government has instituted Integrated revenue administration systems but the lower local governments are not managing, inspecting and putting to book the officers who are collecting this revenue into their pockets,” Rusoke explained.

“We have health inspectors, employed and paid by government. We have veterinary officers in all districts, municipalities and cities. So these are the people who should check the cleanliness and make sure that abattoirs are clean and ready to give services for human consumption,” she added 

At the tail end, Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa hopes that the report will bring a number of sidelined issues affecting local governments. For quite some time, he says that these entities have been up in arms over the failure by the Government to release their own generated revenue.