Hyderabad: Some GHMC veterinary wing are allegedly making money off the scheme to sterilise stray dogs. Sources said these personnel were inflating the number of stray dogs that were sterilised in a bid to make money.
The corporation in order to control the stray dog menace had decided to take up sterilisation of strays as part of its Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme. As part of this, stray dogs are picked up by GHMC squads and are sterilised and vaccinated against rabies. A small V-shaped cut is made in the dog’s ear before it is released on the streets.
Each sterilisation costs the corporation Rs 320. As per official records, around 90,000 birth control operations were conducted in 2014-15, 60,000 in 2015-16, 98,000 in 2016-17 and 1.51 lakh in 2017-18. Sources said that going by these numbers, a large number of dogs on the city’s streets should have had the ‘V’-shaped cut in their ears, But this was hardly seen, they pointed.
Highly placed sources said that veterinary wing officials were hand in glove with the doctors and had allegedly swindled Rs 3 crore on an average per year without performing the operations.
Sources said that a survey conducted by the corporation estimated that there were more than six lakh stray dogs in the city. The corporation was sterilising about 80,000 to 1 lakh dogs on agerage, every year.
Interestingly, the number of birth control operations were increasing every year despite a severe staff crunch. A senior GHMC official, on condition of anonymity, said that one of the issues they were facing was that of not having sufficient number of staff.
The GHMC has 28-30 veterinary doctors. Some zones have one one doctor to perform the ABC operations, it is learnt. When asked about the increase in the number of sterilisation procedures a despite a staff crunch and the reason for not marking ‘V’ on the sterilised dog’s ear, the official refused to comment. This newspaper tried to contact GHMC chief veterinary officer Venkateshwar Reddy but he was not available for comment.
The corporation official claimed that the sterilisation cost was Rs 920 in Mumbai, Rs 750 in New Delhi, Rs 650 in Ludhiana and Rs 650 in Bengaluru.
The GHMC was performing the procedure at Rs 320, he said. It cost Rs 590 even in the Secunderabad Cantonment that lies adjacent to the GHMC area.
