Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala has been facing an unusual stray dog menace for quite a while with the High Court even terming it a grave public issue. However, the State is unlikely to get any relief from the strays anytime soon as it will take at least four years to sterilise even 70% of them. The revised central norms for carrying out Animal Birth Control (ABC) programmes have come as a dampener for the State's efforts in this direction.
The main obstacles to achieving the target are the practical difficulties in implementing the procedures established under the Animal Birth Control Rules (ABC Rules 2023) notified by the Central government.
If the revised norms are to be followed, only a maximum of 5,000 dogs could be sterilized in the 20 Animal Birth Control centres in the State. According to the estimates of 2019, there are 2.89 lakh stray dogs in the State, not counting the birth of puppies. Only 17,987 stray dogs have been sterilized in nearly 9 months starting from September 2022 to June 11 this year.
The revised norms make it mandatory that the services of a veterinary doctor with the experience of conducting 2,000 sterilization surgeries should be available to allow the functioning of an ABC centre. As it is, there is a shortage of veterinary doctors with years of experience and to add to it, the demand by the Kerala Veterinary Council that those who pass out of veterinary courses should be allowed to conduct surgeries has not been accepted.
Other key conditions
1) Each local self-government must seek recognition for its ABC programme by sending the proposal to the Centre’s project committee.
2) Installation of CCTV is mandatory in all ABC centres. The footage should be preserved for a month and submitted to the supervising authorities.
3) The team that catches stray dogs should include workers of animal welfare organisations and more than two employees who have been trained by the local self-government.
4) Before catching the dogs, the public should be informed of it through banners and loudspeakers.
5) After the surgery, dogs should be accommodated in an enclosure for four days and their condition monitored. The animals brought from the same household or a particular area should be accommodated in single cages. Male and female dogs should be accommodated in different enclosures.
