Lack of dog census leaves GHMC with poor handle on curbing stray menace

Hyderabad: The GHMC claims of sterilising around 4.7 lakh dogs, without being gender specific, and estimating the presence of 1 lakh unsterilised dogs ring hollow as the civic body is yet to take up a dog census in the city.

Official sources said that the civic body has been providing false numbers to higher authorities. Sources said that while field-level staff reports to city commissioner D.S. Lokesh Kumar stated 300 stray dogs were being sterilised per day, a report submitted to animal husbandry minister T. Srinivas Yadav stated that 6,000 dogs were being sterilised per day.

Amid a slew of programmes for sterilisation and anti-rabies vaccination, there is no handle on the number of dogs as data submitted to higher authorities indicate the presence of over 8 lakh dogs, even as the GHMC claims to have sterilised 4.7 lakh of 5.7 lakh dogs in the city.

Keeping aside the numbers, residents questioned how sterilisation would resolve issues of dog bites, in the context of a four-year-old boy being mauled to death by stray dogs in Amberpet on February 21. M. Pradeep, the victim, was attacked while he was playing at Mallapur Green Hills Colony.

GHMC sources also said that sterilisation will not reduce the cases of dog bites as the corporation is not considering a scientific approach.

While the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends a 1:20 stray dog population in developing nations, the GHMC’s apathy is posing a danger to citizens as dogs resort to aggressive behaviour on being deprived of food and vaccinations.

Residents also said that each time a stray attack is reported, GHMC officials are ready with excuses to evade responsibility.

In an incident in April 2022, two-year-old Anas Ahmed was attacked by a pack of stray dogs near Bada Bazaar area of Golconda, with authorities blaming the free run given to dogs in the adjoining military area.

In January 2021, nine-year-old boy Mohammed Ayaan was mauled to death by stray dogs in Bahadurpura while playing with his friends. In this instance, authorities charged children with provoking the strays, especially females with pups, and cited open garbage dumping as the reason.

According to the official data, around 90,000 birth-control operations were conducted in 2014-15, 60,000 in 2015-16, 98,000 in 2016-17, 1,51,000 in 2017-18, 2,23,000 in 2018-19, 50,091 in 2020-21, 73,601 in 2021-22 and 40,155 in 2022-23. The data for 2019-20 was not available.

Corporation officials, meanwhile, cited the allocation of Rs 320 per each birth-control operation as the major reason for the mushrooming stray menace in the city. Citing that Rs 920 was allocated per operation in Mumbai, Rs 750 in New Delhi, Rs 650 in Ludhiana and Bengaluru, and Rs 590 in the Secunderabad Cantonment area, they said that the allocation of Rs 18 crore must be enhanced.

However, officials refused to comment on the dog census or delve into details of how they arrived at an estimate of 5.7 lakh dogs.