Departmental inefficiency: Stray dog killings put question mark on government policies

Despite thousands of stray dogs being neutered to curtail their excessive population, Punjab’s residents have taken it upon themselves to get rid of strays - by inhumanely killing them.

Back in 2021, the Punjab government enacted a project to carry out vasectomy and vaccination of dogs; under this programme, the killing of stray dogs was banned. At that time, a total of Rs 74 million was allocated for the project and 230,000 dogs were to be neutered and vaccinated in the province.

However, as per data available with The Express Tribune, only about 68,000 strays could be neutered. Experts and activists alike feel that the government missing targets in its campaign have now triggered another wave of residents resorting to inflicting violence on dogs. On the other hand, The Express Tribune learnt from sources privy to the matter that it was not missed targets which had resulted in the killings but verbal instructions from the Chief Secretary’s Office to all DCOs and Commissioners to control strays after a rise in dog bites that had resulted in the present situation.

However, animal rights activist Aneeza Khan Umarzai, while commenting on the grave situation, was of the view that the plan the government had formulated was itself flawed “regardless of why the killings have seen an uptick.” Umarzai was of the view that the government had laid down what they would do for the strays but did not indicate what punishments or penalties would be imposed on people who kill dogs.

Apart from the lack of clarity on the government’s part, Umarzai believes that the programme failed to yield any significant results because of weak communication between departments. “It is the Lahore Metropolitan Corporation’s responsibility to catch stray dogs from the neighbourhoods and release them back into their environment after the vasectomy and vaccination. But from what I know the concerned squad has been provided with only one vehicle in Lahore.

Hence the failure,” she informed. Umarzai further said that neither the Livestock Department has any arrangements nor the Metropolitan Corporation has any facility to keep stray dogs under care for a few days after their operations.Chief Officer, Lahore Metropolitan Corporation, Ali Abbas Bukhari, when asked about the department’s failure to control the strays leading to their eventual killing, said they were doing their best. “The responsibility of killing stray dogs was with the health department before but last year the government entrusted this responsibility to us.” However, Bukhari conceded that the programme had not gone according to plan. “Our staff has been trained to catch dogs and they have handed over hundreds of strays to livestock but the reality is that the project has not worked very well as we were short on funds,” he said.

Bukhari, when asked what sort of additional support would be required to make the project work, opined that a city like Lahore alone should have at least 12 teams and vehicles to catch the dogs and a proper surveillance team. “There is no doubt that more work needs to be done to control the population of stray effectively,” Bukhari told The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 8^th, 2022.