Sometime next week, the Coimbatore Corporation is likely to throw open the animal birth control centre it had built at ₹ 36 lakh at Ondipudur.
The impact of the civic body opening the centre would be that there would a gradual reduction in street dog population in the city, as the non-government organisation to whom the Corporation would hand over the centre – People For Animals Unit II – would resume performing birth control operation.
The Corporation had to build the Ondipudur centre because of opposition from people in Ukkadam, who had alleged that dogs caught for operation jumped over the Ukkadam centre’s compound and troubled road user.
After closing the Ukkadam centre in March 2017, the Coimbatore Corporation began scouting for land for almost year. It then chose the land near the Ondipudur sewage treatment plant. There, it had built the centre with nine sheds, an operation theatre and other required facilities that were spread over 4,700 sq.ft.
Once the Ondipudur centre started functioning, the People For Animals would perform 10 – 15 operations a day and had plans for increasing the number of operations, if the facility was good enough, said People For Animal Unit II Managing Trustee Kalpana Vasudevan.
The Corporation had allotted three zones to the organisation – East, Central and South and give the remaining two – West and North zones to Humane Animal Society, which had an animal birth control centre in Seeranaickenpalayam, said Corporation sources.
Aside from resuming the animal birth control operation, the People For Animals Unit II would also have to assess the number of dogs to be operated upon as in the three years that it had to suspend operation, the dog population had increased, the sources added.
Therefore, to assess the number of dogs, the organisation had worked with volunteers in each ward and the count was close to 30,000 dogs in the three zones, Ms. Vasudevan said.
And, after resuming the operation, the organisation would reach out to residents in the three zones to alert or call it for problems regarding street dogs, she added.
