After a gap of 17 months, the Mandya City Municipal Council (CMC) on Tuesday launched a drive to capture stray pigs in the town. However, the drive faced resistance from pig rearers.
As the menace of pigs has been continuing unabated in the town for the past several years, the civic authority had conducted a similar drive on December 3, 2014. In the wake of large-scale complaints of pig menace in recent times, the CMC has restarted the drive, T.N. Narasimha Murthy, Commissioner of CMC, said.
Speaking to The Hindu here, Mr. Murthy said: “We have caught a good number of pigs roaming in the vicinity of Labour Colony, Mandya Institute of Medical Sciences (MIMS) and at other localities.”
Notice to rearers
According to a rough estimate, the town has about 4,500 pigs. The menace has been causing nuisance and increasing the health hazards in the town.
Therefore, the district administration has prohibited the roaming of pigs in the public places in all 35 wards of the CMC.
The civic authority had served notices on pig rearers instructing them to shift their animals away from the town. However, they failed to respond to notices. That has instigated the civic agency to hire pigcatchers, another CMC officer said.
The workers armed with nets visited different parts in the town, caught the animals, loaded them in a vehicle and shifted them to a place outside the town.
Meanwhile, pig rearers have expressed their displeasure over the CMC’s move of catching the animals. They have urged the civic authority to stop the drive.
