By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, JAN 3: Butchers in Khasi and Jaintia hills are up in arms as they have decided to go on an indefinite strike and will not be selling beef in six districts of the state from January 9.
The Khasi-Jaintia Butchers’ Welfare Association (KJBWA) with support from the Federation of Khasi-Jaintia and Garo People (FKJGP) have asked all butchers to close down their shops during the strike.
The strike decision is to protest against the continuance of traders to purchase cattle from the old Khanapara market in Ri Bhoi district under the Syiem of Hima Mylliem.
Addressing a news conference on Tuesday, KJBWA vice president Generous Warlarpih said, “We want to prevail upon traders to sell cattle at the newly established market at Ronghona in Byrnihat.”
He felt traders have only been concentrating on the old Khanapara market which he informed was after the association had decided to stop purchasing cattle from the Khanapara market.
KJBWA has been opposing the decision of the Syiem of Hima Mylliem to do away with the health check-up and ear-tagging of cattle in the old market.
Warlarpih said that the association has been emphasizing the need to conduct regular health check-up of cattle and to ear-tag them, which is important to ensure that the menace of cattle smuggling to Bangladesh is curbed.
“However this idea was not accepted by the Syiem,” he said while informing that because of this, the association decided to revive the new market at Ronghona in Ri Bhoi district.
However, Warlarpih lamented that the traders have not been coming too often to the Ronghona market.
Cattle mostly are brought to Meghalaya from Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and even Nepal, he informed. He also said that on an average around 1400 cattle heads are sold to butchers every week for local consumption.
“But around 3,000-4,000 cattle are smuggled to Bangladesh from Meghalaya per week, and they fetch high price,” he revealed.
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