Cruelty to animals: Citizens’ outrage forces CBC to change method of tackling stray dogs

The board's president has pledged to use alternative means to control population of stray animals.

KARACHI: The outrage expressed by the civil society over the video of a dog being shot to death by employees of the Cantonment Board Clifton (CBC) has forced the authority to reconsider their methods of controlling the population of stray animals.

The video captured by a resident from the rooftop of their house showed the assailants with assault rifles, standing in the back of a mini-truck, taking aim and shooting down stray dogs in front of them. As the video went viral on social media websites, it sparked an outrage among members of the civil society, some of whom approached the CBC and demanded that such methods be stopped immediately.



"We met the CBC president Brig Farrukh Waseem and informed him about the inhumane act of the board's employees," said Muttahida Qaumi Movement MNA Ali Rashid, who was accompanied by several citizens. "We cited examples of other countries that have tackled the issue of stray animals without resorting to such methods," he explained.

Rashid added that the citizens and the CBC had decided to set up a working relationship to employ alternative means to check the increasing number of stray animals. He added that Brig Waseem had agreed to immediately put a stop to the killing of stray dogs by poisoning or shooting them.

For his part, Brig Waseem told The Express Tribune that the culling of stray dogs by means of poison or shooting had been stopped with immediate effect in the jurisdiction of the CBC.

"We have teamed up with the civil society to experiment new ways such as vaccinating and sterilising the stray animals to control their population," he explained.

Earlier, the CBC's chief of sanitary staff, Shabbir Hussain, had claimed that shooting stray dogs was permitted by the Cantonment Act and that they had been conducting the practice since a long time. Brig Waseem, however, was of the belief that the situation has changed across the world and pledged to put an end to the practice once and for all.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 6^th, 2015.