To love or not to love
Of late, the number of stray canines roaming the streets seemingly unperturbed by anything has increased in Sylhet city.
The absence of sterilisation or proper management programmes has in a way helped the dog population to rise rapidly, putting dwellers in much trouble, alleged residents.
Also, there have been no coordinated steps taken by the authorities concerned to address this issue, they said.
“I return home around 3:00am everyday after work from Jindabazar on foot,” said Bikash Dutta, an employee of a local daily who lives in Ambarkhana, adding, “I often get attacked by groups of stray dogs.”
Rojob Ali, a hotel businessman at Baghbari Point in the city, said, “I used to see these dogs as our security option and fed them regularly. But in recent days, their number has increased. So we complained to the corporation.”
“Following our complaints, the corporation's van came in the evening and started executing dogs. But that was extremely brutal,” he added.
According to the health department of Sylhet City Corporation, hundreds of dogs are being executed per year after getting complaints about dogs with rabies.
“Each year, when the population of dogs increases or citizens ask us to take steps, we execute some of them,” said Enamul Habib, chief executive officer of SCC.
But no rabies test method is used before executing the dogs, SCC sources said.
Even though most of us see these creatures as a perfect carrier for diseases, we tend to forget dogs likely were the first animals to be domesticated and shared a common environment with humans for over thousand years, said members of Pradhikar, a voluntary animal rights organisation comprising students of Sylhet Agricultural University.
Stray dogs are in a way societies' inability to care for what they have created, they added.
Pradhikar recently organised a de-worming campaign on the campus and its adjacent areas, where they fed medicine to over a hundred street dogs in the adjacent areas of Tilagarh, Nayabazar and Baluchar, under supervision of Dr Mahfuzur Rahman, faculty member of the medicine department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences of SAU.
In some areas, locals also assisted them, they said.
“Dogs are friendly and helpful by nature. But these stray ones are not germ-free…We need a system to manage this issue, not just execute them in public. Rabies is the main cause of the execution, but many healthy dogs are getting killed too,” said Manjur Kader Chowdhury, president of Pradhikar. City corporation officials said the rabies' vaccination is around Tk 100 to Tk 150 each dog per year and the population controlling vaccine for dogs is Tk 1,000 per dog. Enamul said they do not get any rabies vaccines for dogs. The supplies they receive from the government are for people. “We also pay for the freight cost,” he said. “We have no expertise on dogs, we couldn't do anything better to change the scenario,” added the SCC chief executive officer.
In April 2015, a writ petition was filed to ban the dog culling, and the Supreme Court on November 2015 issued a rule asking the authorities concerned to explain in four weeks why it should not be banned, said Dr Mahfujur of SAU.When asked, Enamul said the corporation is not aware of any order given by the SC.
“We're a voluntary group, not capable of running big scale programmes. We need authorities like the city corporation to solve this issue,” said Manjur. “We are willing to work with any animal rights organisation to come up with a system; we could start a joint programme,” said Enamul. “It is very important to initiate a process to control the dog population. The corporation can come up with a dog management System. Sterilisation is a must, and if the dogs are properly vaccinated, city dwellers will have no reason to fear,” said Dr Mahfujur. “When the number increases in a particular area, dogs become violent, mostly for food scarcity. The corporation could capture and distribute them around the city and adjacent areas,” he said, adding that the city corporation can also come up with awareness programmes about non-violent ways of dealing with stray dogs so that people do not get bitten. Enamul said the corporation will take all the suggestions into consideration to come up with a comprehensive plan.
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