Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Commissioner Siddaiah and chairman of the Standing Committee on Health, B.S. Manjunath Reddy, flagged off the Action-Cum-Mobile Surgical Units for the civic authority's Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme at the BBMP head office on Friday.
The vehicles will help the BBMP implement the ABC and Anti Rabies Vaccination (ARV) programmes in all the 198 wards.
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The number of packages has been increased from 15 to 20 to attend to stray dog menace in East and South zones, where the number of complaints is high and the BBMP has deployed two Rapid Action-Cum-Mobile Surgical units in these zones.
Speaking after the flagging off the vehicles, the BBMP Commissioner said the tender for the two programmes was allotted to two animal welfare organisations from Andhra Pradesh, one independent veterinary doctor, two organisations from Maharashtra and three from Karnataka. Mr. Siddaiah said that only long-term efforts would help the BBMP achieve some success in controlling the dog menace.
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The target was to sterilise around 80,000 dogs a year. He put the number of strays at over three lakh.
“We cannot cull the dogs; only overly ferocious, ill and aged dogs will be culled,” he said.
Parviz Ahmed Piran, Joint Director (Animal Husbandry), said the ABC and ARV work was going on in 16 packages and work is expected to commence in a week in the remaining four packages.
For stray dog-bites and complaints, residents of East Zone may contact Animal Welfare Society (9449435102, 9449435103), and those in South Zone may contact VETs Society for Animal Welfare and Rural Development (8892938889).