Two years ago, a pack of stray dogs mauled a five-year-old boy while he was playing near his house at Bhavanipuram. After the usual hullabaloo, the matter soon faded out of people’s memory.
Strangely enough, officials have not learnt lessons from the past. The Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) had stopped sterilisation of stray dogs long ago, citing fund crunch and lack of facilities. Neither did animal rights activists volunteer to take up the task. More so, they shied away from the matter, stating that the city lacked facilities to sterilise dogs.
The need for taking concrete steps to curb the menace was felt after a seven-year-old boy, Syam, was severely injured in a stray dog attack at Kabela Centre on Sunday.
Canine population in the city has gone up significantly ever since the VMC suspended birth control measures in 2009. The corporation had then pegged stray dog population at 10,000.
It also claimed of “successfully conducting” ovario-hysterectomy and surgical castration on dogs in the city, adding that more than 7,000 stray dogs had undergone the surgeries. In phase-I, 3,000 canines were sterilised, while the remaining were covered in phase-II. The corporation spent more than Rs. 31 lakh on the initiative in 2009. Though it was announced that sterilisation measures would be taken up every year without fail, the authorities have hardly kept their word.
The corporation has not conducted sterilisation surgeries on puppies and pregnant dogs, citing certain guidelines, and it has triggered a rise in canine population. Though precise statistics are not available, it is estimated that there are close to 16,000 stray dogs in the city.
VMC officials are caught in a Catch-22 situation after Sunday’s incident. Faced with criticism from people and demands from animal rights activists, corporation officials have requested their higher-ups to give them a week’s time to launch the sterilisation drive. “We can neither take up killing nor shift canines to the outskirts of the city owing to Supreme Court orders. Animal rights activists are also indirectly pressurising us, saying they will keep a vigil on our work,” said an official.