The Jakarta City administration will move ahead with its plan to relocate chicken shelters and slaughterhouses beginning next month, despite several protests from unhappy chicken traders and a recommendation from the City Council to delay it, reports Jakarta Globe.

At a public discussion yesterday (18 March), Edy Setiarto, the head of Jakarta's Agriculture, Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Agency, said:"The main objective is protecting people, because avian influenza is still a threat to the society."

A 2007 bylaw on poultry control, husbandry and distribution mandates the relocation and states that poultry brought to markets in Jakarta be already cut, cleaned and frozen to help prevent the spread of avian influenza.

Once implemented, the bylaw will see 1,950 chicken slaughterhouses throughout the capital – many of them in residential areas – closed down and relocated to five main facilities in Rawa Kepiting, Pulo Gadung and Cakung in East Jakarta, Kebun Bibit in South Jakarta and Eka Dharma in West Jakarta.

Chicken traders who have been protesting the plan have intensified their campaign over the past few weeks, gaining the backing of the City Council, which on 16 March recommended that the relocation be delayed for six months because the new locations were not yet ready.

Siti Maryam, head of the Jakarta Poultry Traders Association (HPUJ), said 64,000 chicken traders with 75,000 employees may be forced to close because they could not afford the costs of freezing, packing and distributing chicken from the new locations.

She said: "The relocation cannot guarantee that bird flu would be gone. The plan would only make way for a chicken-trading monopoly."

The traders told Jakarta Globe they already complied with the local government's sanitation requirements.