Hyderabad: Can the monkey menace plaguing many villages be a campaign issue? On Thursday it turned out to be one, and need some deft work by BRS senior leader B. Vinod Kumar, campaigning for party Vemulawada candidate Chalmeda Lakshmi Narasimha Rao.
When they were addressing a group of people at Kanagarthy in Konaraopet mandal of Rajanna Sircilla district, some women asked the BRS leaders what the government was doing to rid the village of the monkey menace.
Vinod Kumar explained that monkeys follow their own rhythm and obviously lack discipline. “If a monkey undergoes a family planning operation, it needs to be anesthetised for two or three days, otherwise it will pull and scratch the wound area and hurt itself. Research is on to figure out the best way to deal with it,” he said.
He said the government was looking at whether the monkeys can be given pills to prevent pregnancies. “Our government is conducting research on these and once a viable solution is found, there is no question of letting these monkeys have their way. But then there are some organizations that work for animal welfare they go to court saying this should not be done, that should not be done, we are in discussions with them too to find the right solution,” he said.
The problem of monkeys marauding through villages is not unique to Kanagarthy and is widespread in the state, and is a problem serious enough that prompted the government to set up a monkey sterilization centre in Nirmal with family planning operations on the animals aimed at cutting their reproduction and slowly bring the monkey numbers down.
Though the government also began planting fruit bearing trees as part of effort to wean monkeys away from villages, this is yet to bear results as trees take their time to grow and start bearing fruit.
