SDMC begins dog census, 4 new sterilisation centres by Sep end

New Delhi, Aug 28 (PTI) Seeking to curb the menace ofstray dogs in the national capital, South Delhi MunicipalCorporation is all set to operationalise four newsterilisation centres by next month end and has begun work onbuilding another such large-scale facility in Dwarka. The new centres, located at Bijwasan, Nangli, Masoodpurand Mundala, are equipped with one operation unit each, andofficials said, these would significantly boost the civicbody’s capacity to sterilise stray dogs. "Our current average capacity is 70-80 dogs per day whichtranslates into about 2,500 dogs per month. Once these fourcentres get operationlised, the capacity would increase to4,500," Director of Veterinary Services of SDMC, R B S Tyagi,told PTI. The civic body currently has nine sterilisation centresout of which four in Lajpat Nagar, Tughlaqabad, TilangpurKotla and Ghazipur are owned and managed by the SDMC, whilethe rest are commissioned to NGOs. But sterilisation at allthe nine facilities are being done by the NGOs, he said. Tyagi said, besides the four new centres, SDMC has begunwork on construction of a huge sterilisation facility atSector 29 in Dwarka. "The Dwarka centre, spread over two acres, would havefour units. So, that would mean twelve operating tables andits sterilisation capacity would be 4,000-5,000 dogs permonth. Also, though NGOs only would be carrying out thesterilisation, SDMC’s deputy directors would sit at theseunits to monitor the facilities," he said. Meanwhile, SDMC today started its dog census which wouldalso allow it to measure the progress of the sterilisationprogramme. SDMC has commissioned NGO Humane Society International-India for it and a trial was held for the canine countexercise yesterday to train the volunteers. HSI-India said it will compile and analyse the data overa period of eight weeks and a report will be submitted to theSDMC by the end of October. The last count of street dogs was done in 2009 for thethen unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) which hadpegged their population at around 5.62 lakh. After its trifurcation into North, South and EastCorporations (NDMC, SDMC and EDMC) in 2012, none of threecivic bodies had taken up the exercise. The census assumes significance as several cases of dogbites and attacks by stray animals have been reported in areasunder all the three corporations. Last August, a seven-year-old boy in Jamia Nagar in southDelhi had died after being attacked by a pack of stray dogs,prompting the Delhi High Court to seek a report from the SDMCon measures taken by it to curb dog menace in its area.(MORE) PTI KND SKSRY