NEW DELHI: After the exit of former Municipal Commissioner Rakesh Mehta, the cash-strapped Municipal Corporation of Delhi has now started the process for making its controversial slaughterhouse project -- Delhi Food Processing Complex (Meat) -- at Ghazipur in East Delhi "financially viable" by bringing down its cost from Rs.185 crores to Rs.110 crores.

Senior civic body officials involved in the ambitious project since the beginning are busy trying to find out ways that could bring down the cost. And they have already identified at least two specific areas of the project that they think could be done away as they see it as wasteful expenditure for the MCD. This includes procurement of refrigerated vans for transportation of processed meat and setting up a chain of cold storage across the city for storing it hygienically.

The officials feel that the civic body could not afford such expenditure worth crores that Mr. Mehta had proposed during his tenure that had led to escalation of the cost of the project, spread over 80 acres and comprising a mechanised abattoir, a rendering plant and an effluent treatment plant with a capacity to handle 5,000 animals daily. And now a serious thinking on the issue is presently under way, they added. "Though certain avoidable parts of the project have already been completed. But we intend not to include some other features that will help us bring down the cost," said an official.

Significantly, initially the hi-tech abattoir was to come up at 200-year-old Idgah and was later shift to Ghazipur after the Supreme Court's intervention. As its capacity was enhanced, the project cost first went up from Rs.65 crores to Rs.110 crores and then to Rs.185 crores after Mr. Mehta included some other features in the project. Though the Centre and the Delhi Government is financially assisting the MCD in the abattoir's construction, corruption charges by various quarters of the civic body are also making officials wary.

A senior official conceded that Mr. Mehta showed keen interest in the project, but now the zeal is missing since the new Commissioner A. K. Nigam took over. However, after the recent Supreme Court indictment of the MCD regarding the delay in the project, it has set up a high-power committee that will now be observing the construction work besides opening an office at the site itself.

"Mr. Mehta had said that the abattoir would be opened by the end of December 2005. However, after he left, the work got delayed. We are two months behind schedule, mainly due to reshuffling of some officials involved in the project, and the project is now likely to be completed by June 2006," he added.

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