ADILABAD: The Adilabad civic body began a campaign to sterilise strays to control their population and the menace following incidents of dog bites, attacks and injuries to people. The civic body spends Rs 1,500 on each sterilisation which includes post-operative care including food, medicine, anti-rabbis vaccine, and transportation before releasing them in the same place from where they were picked up.
At least 35 strays have so far been sterilised and the civic body has targeted to sterilise 300 aggressive dogs out of 1,200 strays in Adilabad municipality.
Municipal commissioner Md Qamar Ahmed said they are using general funds of the municipality for the sterilisation programme. He said releasing the stray dogs in the same place is a must as per the animal behaviour to avoid entry of new strays in the colony and to avoid incidents of fresh dog attacks.
Md Qamar Ahmed said first they will focus on aggressive strays. It is said that there are 1,200 street dogs in Adilabad town. There are many complaints from the residents about the menace of the street dogs. The civic staff enumerated the population of strays in 49 colonies to know the gravity of the problem.
Even children and women were facing a lot of hardships when walking on the roads since they have to cross the packs of street dogs in some colonies.Morning walkers face a lot of problems with street dogs early in the morning and there are incidents where women and elderly persons stop going for morning walk in fear of stray dogs.
The municipal staff began the programme after capturing strays at the Animal Care Center at Bangariguda in Adilabad mandal. The municipality is running the centre on the outskirts of the Adilabad town.
Adilabad MLA Payal Shankar said he recently met the chief secretary and requested the state government to release special funds to run the Animal Care Centre. He said stray dogs are attacking walkers and residents in colonies and people in villages and posing life threats to them.
Adilabad municipal chairman Jogu Premender said they embarked on sterilisation of strays for the safety of people following complaints of stray dogs biting children playing on roadside in front of their houses.
