Chennai’s unsterilised dog count up 90% in 2.5 years

CHENNAI: Greater Chennai Corporation has planned to increase fourfold the sterilisation surgery capacity at its three Animal Birth Control (ABC) centres in Kannamapettai, Pulianthope and Lloyds Colony in the city. The main reason behind the move is that the number of unsterilized community dogs in the city has gone up by around 90% in the past two and a half years.
According to GCC data, there were around 42,000 unsterilised dogs in the city in October 2018. This number has increased to 81,000 by February this year.
In the intervening 28 months, GCC’s centres were able to sterilise only 24,134 dogs, official data shows. Unsterilised dogs are caught from various zones of the corporation and brought to these centres, where they are sterilised, immunised and later released back to the streets they were picked up from. Blue Cross and Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) also conduct these ABC programmes.
Recently, a proposal was mooted to construct a twostorey building in each of the ABC centres to house 20 kennels along with facilities for the staff associated with the programme. The project, taglined “Chennai-Care for Animals Project (C-CAP)’, would cost the corporation around ₹9.2 crore. According to GCC documents, once the upgrade is made, the operational cost of each ABC centre would be around ₹13.7 lakh a month, which translates to a total Rs 4.9 crore a year for the three centres.
Currently, in the three centres put together, GCC performs only 30 surgeries a day. Once the additional facilities are constructed, GCC will have the capacity to perform 120 surgeries per day.
Based on this projection, 31,680 dogs could be sterilised every year and it would take two and a half years for all unsterilised dogs in the city identified in February to be sterilised, GCC’s estimates state.
The civic body said the upgraded parts of ABC centres could be used as pet clinics, animal health and welfare centres, pet boarding and care facilities, community interaction centres, urban forest patches, pet shop and pet cafés, pet therapy centres among others.