BENGALURU: Sarvodaya Sevabhavi Samstha, caught in the middle of Animal Husbandry Department’s plans for revamping the veterinary facility on Queens Road, was in for a rude shock on Monday.
Staff from the Electricity Board were disconnecting power supply from the hospital. The Samstha employees worried for the animal inmates at their Animal Birth Control centre, which runs from the hospital.
At present there are 40 dogs dependent on the ABC centre, as inpatients and outpatients. And its freezer holds vaccination worth Rs 15,000 approximately.
Trustee of the Samstha, Vinay Moray, says, “If anything should shut this centre down, then ABC programme in all of East Bengaluru will come to a halt.” Theirs is one of the two centres that serves city’s eight zones.
Vinay had confronted the KEB staffers and asked them to stop. But, they pleaded helplessness saying the animal husbandry department has sent them a letter asking them to disconnect the power.
“We got a letter from the Deputy Director’s office (under Animal Husbandry) and we are carrying out those orders,” says Muzammil, a JE with the electricity board. “As far as we know this is a building under the Animal Husbandry department and, if anyone asks us to stop from that department, then will stop... now one person asks us to shut out power for this building and another is asking us to keep it running.”
Dr Nagendra, Deputy Director (Animal Husbandry), says that the Samstha had been asked to vacate ten months ago. “We had informed them then but they kept stalling moving out,” he says. “They kept asking for extensions and we kept giving it to them. On Saturday, we had told them that they must vacate by Monday and they had even agreed to it... now they are going to the media with this. This is Animal Husbandry’s property and they are asking us to move our multi-specialty hospital elsewhere.”
Vinay says that they were given very little time to vacate the premises. “We had been sent a notice from the office of Dr Nagendra (on Saturday, asking us to vacate the premises,” says Vinay. On Monday morning, since Sunday was a holiday, he wrote a reply to the department asking them to wait till Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Pallike decides where they ABC centre can be shifted to. “We have to work out a place and how much rent the BBMP is willing to help out with,” says Vinay. “Where do we take the dogs without that otherwise?”
Dr Nagendra says that the BBMP had asked the Samstha to shift to the NGO’s Jakkur centre.
Vinay says that animal husbandry department officials asked him to hire a generator to run the Queens Road centre. “Who will pay for that,” he asks.
The other ABC centres were shut down across the city because BBMP was slow with payments and officials were indifferent.