‘There will be no stray dog in Sindh after five to eight years’

Sindh’s local government secretary has claimed that there will be no stray dog in the province after five to eight years, saying that a grand operation to vaccinate homeless canines will be launched next week.

In a statement issued on Saturday, Roshan Ali Shaikh said the provincial government has formulated a plan to curb the growing population of stray dogs across the province. He said that as part of the grand operation, homeless canines will also be tagged.

Shaikh said that the PC-1 of the ‘Street Dog Population & Rabies Control Programme’ will be presented to the technical committee of the government on Monday (tomorrow).

He said that the conventional method of killing stray dogs is also under way across the province. However, he added, the government cannot kill all the homeless canines because that is a cruel way to control their population.

The LG secretary said that Sindh is the first province to launch a modern technique to deal with the issue of stray dogs, adding that the involvement of government officials in this project will be at the minimum level.

He said that public awareness is one of the major components of the plan. “We need to understand our attitude towards animals. They react badly when annoyed.”

A day earlier, Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Pechuho had rushed to the National Institute of Child Health (NICH) to inquire about the health of six-year-old Hasnain from Larkana, whose face and scalp was bitten off by a pack of stray dogs.

She defended the performance of Larkana’s biggest hospital, whose medical superintendent had asked the boy’s family to take him to Karachi to save his life. She said the reason behind the absence of facilities at the Chandka Medical Centre was the doctors and surgeons’ refusal to work in the distant city of the province.

“Specialists and surgeons are not willing to work in Larkana, so the surgery of the child was not possible there. “The child was brought here at the NICH and his parents are satisfied with the treatment here,” she said, reiterating that it was the job of the municipal bodies, not of the health department, to eliminate stray dogs.

Federal minister Faisal Vawda, Sindh Assembly opposition leader Shamim Firdous Naqvi, MPA Khurrum Sher Zaman and others had also reached the NICH, and censured the provincial government, Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah and the health minister. They demanded their resignation for failing to protect the lives of citizens and the absence of basic health facilities.