Noida: Flooded with reports of dog bites, the Noida Authority has over the past few weeks stepped up sterilisation drive to control dog population in the city. Additionally, the authority is all set to add 20 new kennels at its Sector 94 animal shelter, which already has 45 kennels. Officials claimed that the kennels were "urgently required" as squeezing more than four dogs into one kennel “is treated as animal cruelty.”
The sterilisation programme is being conducted by two NGOs, each catering to five work circles. The shelter treats sick canines and the kennels are allotted to sterilised dogs after surgery. The sterilised canines are later released in the localities they were picked up after they recuperate.
Officials said that currently the monthly expenditure on canine care is Rs 15 lakh and Rs 1,000 is spent on the sterilisation of a single dog.
Anuradha Dogra, a volunteer who has been serving at the shelter for over five years, said that the last stray dog census was carried out in 2016 and had found about 15,000 dogs in the city but there has been no census since then. The NGOs claim that the canine population could have multiplied manifolds by now.
Dogra blamed the civic body for the "faulty method" of sterilisation. “The authority should target a sector and finish sterilisation there before moving on to another sector. Currently, it is done in small numbers in a rotational manner, which sees only a few dogs get picked up for sterilisation,” she said.
Sunil Chawla, whose team has been sterilising dogs in Noida for the past two and half years, said that they have covered around 20,000 dogs in the city.
Additionally, the civic body has begun to conduct workshops to counsel residents about ways to deal with stray dogs and how to take care of them.
“There are lots of misconceptions about dogs both among the people who love to care for them and those who don’t. We are also counselling people to make them aware of the laws,” officials said.
“We held a workshop at Sector 34 this weekend as there were complaints of aggressive dogs. When we asked around, we were informed that people who feed them have been locking up the dogs in a room at night to protect them from the cold. This must have prompted the aggression. We counselled the well-meaning residents about it to mitigate such conflicts,” another official added.