Kabul butchers sell infected meat at low price

KABUL (Pajhwok): A number of butchers in Kabul City sell the meat of ill and even dead animals in the market that causes fatal diseases among consumers.

Dr. Abdul Wali Hayati said eating of infected meat was extremely injurious to health. He added the intake of this kind of meat causes brucellosis. 

He said such meat contain epidemic brucellosis virus which could easily transfer. People with brucellosis virus lose weight, appetite, with bones pain and feeling tired most of the time.

The patients with brucellosis virus have high temperature and with the passage of time, this virus enters affects lungs and muscles and ultimately could lead to death, he added.

Dr. Hayati said the meat should be kept under a proper temperature. Most of the beef and mutton openly being sold in bazaar could be dangerous to health.

The price of one kilogram meat in shops with municipality license was being sold at the rate of 270 afs and 320 afs. Some shops without municipality license sell the same quantity of meat at 200 afs.

When a butcher asked about the reason behind low price, he responded smilingly, “we sell to poor people who don’t afford to eat meat for months.”

The butcher turned angry when asked from where he brought the meat. He said: “It is not your concern from where we bring meat.”

A man with shabby clothes entered the butcher’s shop and bought 500 grams of meat at the rate of 120 afs.

Ghulam Hussain said that he was a day laborer and he could earn 300 afghanis if there is a chance for working with someone on daily basis. “Sometimes there are no work opportunities and we are going home without earning anything,” he added.

Hussain said he bought meat once in a month. “When I take this meat to home it takes more time to be cooked. My wife often tells me the meat I bring home is not worth to be cooked.”

The price of each kilogram of meat in shops where they comparably looked a little clean was about 320 afs.

A man asked for a kilogram of meat in one of the butcher shops, the butcher asked the buyer to pay 320 afs. But the buyer replied that one kilogram meat was being sold at 240 afs in the market and why he charged more.

The butcher turned angry and said: “Some butchers sell meat of sick or dead animals with half price.”

Abdul Zahir, secretary of Afghan workers association, said most of the butchers’ shops were not properly registered with the municipality.

He said that Kabul municipality and the Ministry of Interior had the responsibility to control the situation.

But Khair Mohammad, markets’ manager in Kabul, said the locality was once purged of illegal butchers but some of them had again started working in the locality.

He said people with disabilities were supported by the commission of disabilities of Meshrano Jirga and the rent of shops was also paid to the commission.

But the commission member, Syed Hussain Alimi Balkhi, said that numbers of people with disabilities have complained to the Meshrano Jirga and asked them to provide them with job opportunities. The Meshrano Jirga, Kabul municipality, Ministry of Works and Social Affairs and Ministry of Interior have together allocated an area for people with disabilities in Kabul so that they could work there.

He said the money collecting from people with disability did not receive by the commission and anyone who receives the money was involved in corruption.

nh/mds

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