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

Seeking to curb the menace of stray dogs in the national capital, South Delhi Municipal Corporation is all set to operationalise four new sterilisation centres by next month end and has begun work on building another such large-scale facility in Dwarka.
The new centres, located at Bijwasan, Nangli, Masoodpur and Mundala, are equipped with one operation unit each, and officials said, these would significantly boost the civic body's capacity to sterilise stray dogs.
"Our current average capacity is 70-80 dogs per day which translates into about 2,500 dogs per month. Once these four centres get operationlised, the capacity would increase to 4,500," Director of Veterinary Services of SDMC, R B S Tyagi, told PTI.

The civic body currently has nine sterilisation centres out of which four in Lajpat Nagar, Tughlaqabad, Tilangpur Kotla and Ghazipur are owned and managed by the SDMC, while the rest are commissioned to NGOs. But sterilisation at all the nine facilities are being done by the NGOs, he said.
Tyagi said, besides the four new centres, SDMC has begun work on construction of a huge sterilisation facility at Sector 29 in Dwarka.
"The Dwarka centre, spread over two acres, would have four units. So, that would mean twelve operating tables and its sterilisation capacity would be 4,000-5,000 dogs per month. Also, though NGOs only would be carrying out the sterilisation, SDMC's deputy directors would sit at these units to monitor the facilities," he said.

Meanwhile, SDMC today started its dog census which would also allow it to measure the progress of the sterilisation programme.

SDMC has commissioned NGO Humane Society International- India for it and a trial was held for the canine count exercise yesterday to train the volunteers.
HSI-India said it will compile and analyse the data over a period of eight weeks and a report will be submitted to the SDMC by the end of October.
The last count of street dogs was done in 2009 for the then unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) which had pegged their population at around 5.62 lakh.

After its trifurcation into North, South and East Corporations (NDMC, SDMC and EDMC) in 2012, none of three civic bodies had taken up the exercise.
The census assumes significance as several cases of dog bites and attacks by stray animals have been reported in areas under all the three corporations.
For the exercise, HSI's senior manager for monitoring,
evaluation and impact assessment, Amit Chaudhari will be joined by a highly experienced dog census consultant, Lex Hiby from the UK, the NGO said.
"They will be assisted by a team of eight volunteers who will be conducting the census from 5 to 9 AM every day. The volunteers will conduct the census in teams of two wherein one volunteer will ride a motorbike and the one on pillion will use a specially-designed mobile app to record the data," a senior official of the NGO said.

"The volunteers will collect data on pre-decided routes that have been created using the boundary details submitted by the SDMC. The app uses Google Maps, which creates a track on the mobile phone and the data collected would then be fed on a daily basis to a software for summary analysis," she added.
The census would give us an estimated figure and not the exact one, the official said.
Chaudhari says, "Through this survey, we will know the total number of free-roaming dogs in the SDMC areas. We will also know the number of dogs sterilised or unsterilised (male and female), lactating females and puppies."

Tyagi also said 10 new dog vans have been procured at a cost of Rs 55 lakh. We would also be acquiring 20 vans for Dwarka, he said.
Sharing statistics, he said, 2,174 dogs have been sterilised in April and 2,132 in May in south Delhi.
Dog bite is a major worry for residents in this area and the SDMC said the new centres would further allow them to curb this menace.
From April 2012 to March 2015, SDMC has sterilised 47,140 street dogs which is nearly thrice the corresponding numbers for North and East Corporations, Tyagi said.
The number of sterilised dogs for NDMC from April 2012 to June 2015 stands at 19,128 while the figure for EDMC stands at 19,206 from April 2012 to May 2015.

North Delhi Municipal Corporation has one sterilisation centre at Peeragarhi, which has one unit and 25 kennels.
"We are planning to come up with two more centres at Sector 27 in Rohini and Lucknow Road, Timarpur. Both facilities are under construction and likely to be ready by this year end," North Delhi Mayor Sanjeev Nayyar said.
East Delhi Municipal Corporation does not have any sterilisation centre of its own and has commissioned NGOs to carry out the work.
"Our target is of sterlising 1,000 dogs per month. So far we do not have any such facility of our own so we have hired a couple of NGOs for the job," East Delhi Mayor Satya Sharma said.