Hyderabad: After a number of incidents involving stray dogs attacking children, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has decided to tackle the menace through various initiatives, which include registration of people who feed stray dogs, and setting up rapid response teams.
The GHMC has also decided to implement a rule from the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017, to mandate real estate developers, who employ more than 50 workers, to set up crèches for their children.
As most of the recent stray dog attacks involved children of the construction workers, the GHMC has decided to link building permission and provision of no-objection certificates (NoC) to setting up of the creche at the construction site.
“Town planning officials will inspect the site and put on hold the building permits and NoCs if a crèche was not provided,” said a GHMC official.
GHMC commissioner Amrapali Kata has instructed town planning officials to make sure that a crèche is in place and also wrote a letter to the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) seeking the same.
“We relooked at the previous dog bite cases and figured out that the children of construction workers are most vulnerable to stray dog attacks,” said a GHMC official.
The other measures to curb stray dog attacks include making provision for water bowls, birth control and anti-rabies vaccine programmes and spreading awareness among people through information, education, and communication (IEC) material designed through inputs from Humane Society International (HSI), an organisation working to protect wildlife and street animals.
On Friday, the officials of the commissioner and director of municipal administration (CDMA) and commissioners of urban local bodies (ULBs) visited the Blue Cross of Hyderabad and met its founder Amala Akkineni to discuss the issue.
