Closed down for a week, one of the longest shut down in its history, the Nehru Zoological Park did spend some anxious times managing the care of animals during the curfew period in the old city.
While its gates remained closed, maintaining the large collection of birds, animals and nocturnal creatures by way of ensuring that their feed was not affected and that they were cared, turned out to be a tough task for the staff. The first challenge was to ensure the supply chain of feed that range from fruits to fish and was followed by having the care takers report for duty traversing the curfew bound locations.
“On the first day of curfew, we did face some trouble in arranging the feed, particularly fish for which we had to scout the markets,” an official said.
Since the menu for some water birds, Otters and Ghadiyal has to include it, the fish markets at Medhipatnam and Narayanguda were visited to procure the feed.
Huge storage facilities available at the zoo came handy to keep the feed in good condition and ensure that none went hungry during the week. Also, curfew passes were acquired and special vehicles were operated by the zoo from different points such as Shivarampally and Attapur to bring and drop back the key personnel including the care-takers.
Visitors
The zoo on a normal working day has around 3,000 visitors while the numbers goes up to 15,000 on holidays which work out to average revenue from gate collection of about Rs.4 crore plus, according to the zoo Education Officer K.Varaprasad.
Drop in revenue
The average gate collection totals around Rs.1 lakh per day and that has been the loss every day for the zoo during the curfew period.
The zoo gates for the visitors were opened on Monday, but it could be some more time before visitors start making plans to enjoy the vast acreages and the animals housed here.
